Is RAID worth it?

[rickon66]

A quick opinion survey to see if folks who have tried RAID 0 see a real performance increase? I just got a KT7A-RAID mobo and was wondering if I should set it up with the RAID or not. Give me some input before I pop this shrinkwrap on these two harddrives setting here.
Thanks

 

[Viperoni]

I had a Quantum KA, got roughly 13mb/s.
Then I got antoher and raided0, now I get 24mb/s.
Nice improvemenet IMO.

 

[Pariah]

Obviously it depends on what you plan to use the system for. For the average use, there is no reason for it, nor will the performance improvement be that good.

 

[Budman]

If you got the Board & 2 drives for it,then why not try it out for yourself & find out.

 

[~zonker~]

It's worth it to me, you don't see the improved performance that often unless you do some heavy disk access apps., I do. The OS loads alot faster and the apps load noticeably faster.

My Sandra bencmarks blew me away after I got everything set up... 2 IBM 30 GB 75GXP's. It's a better upgrade than the faster processor as far as I'm concerned (and more expensive too).

 

[ZeroBurn]

depends if you want a higher sustained transfer rate or access time, the seek times suffer a bit but your transfer rates are much higher. the higher bandwidth is mostly used for large file sharing, graphics, etc.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

I can't justify making the switch to RAID. To much $$$. For the price I would pay to get two decent 20G ATA100 Hard drives, I could grab Maxtor's new 80GB drive. But since we're talking about RAID here.

A couple of questions.

How much to you gain in RAID 0 using ATA100 drives, can ATA66's do just as good of a job??
(Logic suggests that the RAID controller can only hit ATA100 and 2 ATA66 drives could theoretically pump out more than that (ATA66 x 2). Maybe I've got it all wrong. Someone please correct me if this is the case.)

How much of a need is there for 7200 rpm using RAID. Especially with the ever increasing platter densities. I get the feeling 5400's would do just find. But, I could be out in left feild again.

I'm just trying to justify making the move to RAID by cutting cost. But as with anything I suppose you get what you pay for.

To me I just can't see spending the kind of money I think it would take to set up a worthwhile RAID configuration while there are single drive solutions that offer up good performance and a whole lot more storage for your money.

 

[Riverhound]

raid seems cheaper to me... It costs about $350 for a 75gig hd 7200rpm. I can get two 45gig hds for $150 each. The controller card is another $40 or so but u get a faster drive and 15 more gigs with raid.

 

[borealiss]

i dont think it's worth it at all. seek times are higher. and you won't notice the sustained transfer rates since that really shows in sequential reads and writes. if you're a video capture freak on a budget, then it might be worth looking into. the data is also more volatile since you're spanning data across 2 disks. but like Budman said, you have the equipment in front of you, why not take it around the block for a spin?
//edit
no pun intended.

 

[Quickfingerz]

If you can stand the noise, I'd say quantum LM drives would be best in a RAID 0 system because of the much faster access time than the 75GXP.

 

[hifimaster]

On my KT7-raid I tryed setting up 4 20gig WD caviar 7200 ata/100(80 GB in RAID 0)but fdisk didnt see the whole array.So I got on the net on my other computer and found out fdisk didnt support disks larger than 64gig!!!So I downloaded MS patch to fix this :| and it didnt work:Q.So I ordered Partition Magic hopefuly that will do the trick but I HATE FORMATING.Right now I have two of the drives hooked up to the raid channels (C:WIN98,and D:Win2000)the other two drives I use for Backup.When I want to do a backup I plug the power into all 4 drives and enter the raid bios.There is an option to "mirror disk duplication" and that copies every bit of data.The first time I tryed it I used 2 unpartitioned and unformated disks and it still copied the whole fat32 filing system (no need to fdisk or format). When I am done backing up both drives
(45-60 min.)I unplug the pair I an not using and start the computer and the back up is just as good as the original.So I can put DX8 on and just go to the backed up drive to uninstall it .

 

[shiznut123]

if you get some 5400 rpm's then it will be quiet.
my dual seagate 15.3gb hdrives raid0 have some good transfer rates.
in sandra my scores for drive index are 17000

 

[jjsimas]

RAID is worth it for me too.

AFAIK, at any point in time, your hard drive could crash. I've witnessed it happen..

I'm a student, and I write papers on my computer. If I lose 8 hours of work, I'm very depressed.

I feel SO much more comfortable with my system in RAID 1.

If a person does anything on their computer that requires time, produces a product, and the product is something that needs to remain in digital format, then RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 does serve a purpose..
Jason

 

[glp1del]

ditto what jjsimas said.

 

[NFS4]

If your system crashes (let's say due to a power outage or maybe a BSOD), will you loose ALL of your data with a RAID-0 array?

What exactly do you mean by "crash"

 

[glp1del]

In a raid 0 or striped array if one hard drive fails all data is lost; however, in a raid 1 or mirrored array that jjsimas is talking about the two drives are identical so if one fails the other can be use to recover the data. If the power goes out all temporary memory will be lost hopefully autosave or something is on to prevent large amounts of data loss but a loss will still occur even in a raid system. The crash I believe he is talking about is a hard drive mechanical failure not a power outage.

Glp1

 

[blstriker]

I would use RAID 1 for mirroring for security purposes on my server, but I don't feel so good about striping my data across two HD's. Twice the chance of failure, no thanks.

 

[kingz]

With a ABIT KT7a-RAID mobo, 1 45GB 75GXP, and buy.com's $137 price for another 45GB 75GXP, I had to give in If you got a RAID board, just buy another drive. If its not the performance that concerns you, just think of it as more space.

RAID 1 is is a waste of money if you ask me. here are my three reasons why:

1) If your data is not absolutely critical (by critical I mean losing data would cost you thousands of dollars, ie web servers), then regular CDRW backups are enough
2) The price tag of another hard drive without any added space/performance
3) Degraded performance

It my make sense for some, but for most of us, no go.

 

[Macaw]

kingz and others,

Are your RAID only doable in Win9x or does it matter? Can I run Win2K and everything works?

 

[FriedRiceBob]

A note about ATA66 and ATA100. Drives are only able to burst transfer data at these speeds when it's in their buffer. the highest sustainable transfer rates are only close to 40 m/sec. therefore, using two ata66 drives would not max out your ata100 interface. also, that's the benifit of RAID striping, it kills roaches...err... no not that, it can help your file system get closer to it's potential, by adding the sustained transfer rates of the two drives together. the main place you'll see the better transfer rate is for loading times, i.e. loading of a game, moving of big files, etc.

 

[~zonker~]

Raid0 works in DOS, the raid bios supports the disk access.

 

[joohang]

I have 3-computer network at home.

I could replicate my Outlook pst file and My Documents folder on shares of other computers on the network.

Then RAID0 should be a good solution without fear of data loss, right?