Please, Someone eplain RAID, and do I want it?

[DATCAT]

I am trying to figure out the real deal with Raid.
Do I want to have Raid for a home killer system or just put single large drive in and be happy with performance?
Is there a difference?
Pondering the definition...

 

[Bojangles139]

raid stripping is taking a 10meg file, split it two 5megs and saving each 5meg onto a different HDD, effectivly cutting writing\reading time down. Raid mirroring is saving that 10meg file to each HDD so if one fails, you have a backup. if you want more info, search the forum or to go tomshardware.com, they explain it very well.

brandon

 

[Nocturnal]

It might be explained in the FAQ, and if not, search the main site for RAID. I believe Anand did a review of RAID setups or whatever and went over what RAID is.

 

[jaeger66]

If you don't know what it is, you don't need it.



Do I need RAID?

I don't know. You tell me.

How easy it is to answer this question depends on who you are and what you are trying to do. The only way to answer the question is to fully explore the issue, weigh the costs against the benefits, compare the costs to your budget and decide what your priorities are. Do this honestly and the question will answer itself.

That said, I won't cop out completely. Here are some very broad guidelines

Business Servers: In this author's opinion, all but the smallest businesses should be running their critical data on some sort of RAID system. Data is so important, and interruptions can be so crippling to most businesses, that the costs are usually worth it. Even an inexpensive, small RAID setup is better than nothing, and if budget is very tight, not all of the company's data has to reside on the array.

Workstations: For those individuals who are doing intensive work such as video file editing, graphical design, CAD/CAM, and the like should consider a RAID array. RAID 0 will provide the improved performance needed in many of these applications. (RAID 10 is superior due to its redundancy, but the requirement for four drives makes it expensive and space-consuming; if the RAID 0 array is backed up each night then that's usually quite acceptable for a workstation.)

Regular PCs: Most "regular PC users" do not need RAID, and the extra cost of one or more additional hard drives is usually not justified. Most individuals who set up RAID on regular PCs cannot afford hardware RAID and SCSI drives, so they use software RAID or inexpensive IDE/ATA RAID controllers. They are typically setting up RAID solely for performance reasons, and choose RAID 0. Unfortunately, RAID 0 just doesn't improve performance all that much for the way typical PCs are used; I often see gamers setting up RAID 0 systems when most games will take little advantage of it. Meanwhile, the RAID 0 array puts all of the user's data in jeopardy.



http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/whyShould.html

 

[acid16]

I thought I wanted Raid too, but then the folks here at AnAndTech helped me understand that I DON'T need it. instead, like someone mentioned, I am gonna get two drives, but instead of doing Raid 1, im just gonna use one for backups and do weekly backups. The reason is because, if your OS goes corrupt (Win XP Pro does this sometimes) or if you get a nasty virus, you can just go back to the week before backup, but if you were in Raid 1, you'd be screwed, cuz the backup drive would get corrupted also. Plus, this way is cheaper and requires no raid card.

 

[njrich2]

I have a home raid setup. I picked up two 60 GB WD 7200 HD's on sale ($1 a gig with rebates), and attached them to my motherboard raid controller. I'm very happy with it. Program start times are much faster as are most other functions. My HD benchmarks basically doubled. I used Nortons Ghost to clone my original HD to the new setup, and use the old drive as a weekly clone backup (about 3 minutes to be up and running if I go down-tested). I also have a 250 USB zip drive which I had been using anyway to back up files I consider critical (which I will continue inbetween my weekly cloning). I would highly recommend it if you have the budget (and it's still cheeper that SCSI). -njrich2

 

[BG4533]

I had 2 IBM 60GB 60GXPs in a RAID 0 array. About 100GB of it was full (20GB with programs, data, etc and another 80GB with music and movies). Needless to say, one of the drives died and I lost 80GB of multimedia stuff. Luckily I had the important files backed up though. While it lasted there was a definate increase in performance, but I am not sure I would do it again. I think now I would prefer a nice 15k SCSI drive.

Brian