Poll: Who has had Raptors in RAID 0/1 die on them?

[Tab]

I cant stand this, I've got people who make file servers for a living telling me that'd RAID 0 instablity is a joke. If its setup right, it will work. The nvidia RAID will make things even better. On the other hand we've got AnAndTech telling us its a waste. Now, If you kindly list your Raptor RAID and your controller and any problems you've had please tell me. I want to know the truth of the whole matter.

 

[Tab]

Why can't I see my own poll?

 

[JBT]

I can't see your poll either

 

[Tab]

I can edit my poll opitions but I cant post it....W T F

 

[MDE]

2 36GB Raptors (one from mid-2003, one Feb 6 2004) in RAID0 on SiI3112 (onboard Abit NF7-S). No problems yet, although I only got the second one last week.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Tabb
I cant stand this, I've got people who make file servers for a living telling me that'd RAID 0 instablity is a joke.

Tabb, my dear sir... English please?

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Tabb
I cant stand this, I've got people who make file servers for a living telling me that'd RAID 0 instablity is a joke.

They're telling you the RAID 0 is just as reliable for file servers as RAID 5 or RAID 1? I think not.

These people must not make enterprise-grade file servers for a living, that's for sure.

RAID-0 is fine for home users who don't care about their data, but for a serious file server you NEED redundancy.

 

[SilentZero]

Im using the via (MSI-K8T800 NEO-FIS2R) raid currently with two 74gb raptors and not a problem after 2 months. Works great and the speed is outstanding!

 

[zodder]

Originally posted by: SilentZero
Im using the via (MSI-K8T800 NEO-FIS2R) raid currently with two 74gb raptors and not a problem after 2 months. Works great and the speed is outstanding!

Same here, except I'm using 2 x 36GB Raptors and they've been going strong for about 3 months now.

 

[JulesMaximus]

The speed is incredible compared to a 7200rpm IDE drive. I have 2 WD 36GB SATA Raptors in RAID 0 but I've been having stability issues with it. I'm not sure why though. It works for about a week max and then crashes. I can't load Windows on the drives at the default memory speed either (400MHz) without lowering the memory clock to 333MHz. I have a new motherboard on order though so I'm hoping to get the RAID back up and running again. I'd really like to get this to work because the speed is so much faster than IDE.

 

[boomerang]

2 36GB in RAID 0. The drives are about 1 year old. Been running without a hitch on my P4PE w/ Promise PDC20376 controller all that time.

Also, no whining noise as many others have complained about. I'm so happy with these drives I have two 74GB drives waiting for me on the porch today. I have a buyer for the 36's.

Is it faster? Well, Windows installed very, very quickly. Games do load somewhat faster. But in day to day operation, I'm not certain there is a benefit.

That said, I still like 'em. Obviously, as I ordered two of the bigger drives.

 

[imported_intercollector]

I've had just a single raptor for 5 months now, and it's lightning fast, with no problems.

I also have great experience with Raid 0. I'm currently still running 2 IBM 75GXP's (the ones everyone hated), in Raid 0 and have had some stability problems. But now that they are only being used for data storage, they seem to be working great.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: boomerang
2 36GB in RAID 0. The drives are about 1 year old. Been running without a hitch on my P4PE w/ Promise PDC20376 controller all that time.

Also, no whining noise as many others have complained about. I'm so happy with these drives I have two 74GB drives waiting for me on the porch today. I have a buyer for the 36's.

Is it faster? Well, Windows installed very, very quickly. Games do load somewhat faster. But in day to day operation, I'm not certain there is a benefit.

That said, I still like 'em. Obviously, as I ordered two of the bigger drives.

Well, Windows definitely loads faster and I do quite a bit of copying of large files so I do notice the speed difference.

 

[Schnieds]

RAID 0 is definately nice if you can afford two of the Raptors. It depends on the drives used as to whether or not you will see a real performance difference. The Raptors however have been shown to perform very, very well in a RAID 0 configuration.

As far as stability is concerned, you should NEVER trust any drives in a RAID 0 configuration to hold data that you can't lose. It is a much better idea to use the RAID 0 drives for your OS and apps and then have a third drive dedicated to storage of your important data. That way you get the speed and performance of the drives in RAID 0 in for your OS and apps and peace of mind knowing that if the stripe fails your data is intact and all you need to do is re-install your OS.

Just some thoughts...

Schnieds

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Schnieds
As far as stability is concerned, you should NEVER trust any drives in a RAID 0 configuration to hold data that you can't lose. It is a much better idea to use the RAID 0 drives for your OS and apps and then have a third drive dedicated to storage of your important data.
...
Schnieds

I have to reply... You cannot trust this configuration either. If you are worried about losing data, you must use two different off-site storage locations. That is the best way to protect it.

You still have all of your eggs in one basket even with another drive. Backed up on other media? Still in the same house/place I bet. Chances are, you may not have a drive as reliably as WD is betting the Raptor is, as that second drive.

I just pointed this out because there seems to be this lack of faith in the technology that, while healthy, is a bit much. Yes, backup your data as even RAID 5 arrays with two RAID cards on redundant systems fail, or suffer human intervention. Nothing is safe, but lets not carry it too far if we don't need to.

Edit - Schnieds, thought about it and wanted to say that I am not picking on you. Please don't take it that way!

 

[imported_LobbDogg]

I've been running dual 36gb raptors for about 8 months, I did have one die on me while in RAID 0, but I got a replacement within 3 days so it wasn't bad. But then again it could have been partly due to me transporting the computer cause it happened upon booting up the first time after moving.

 

[Tab]

How is it would it be to backup 2x36s? Could I create a image of both drives, put that on a 80Gb and if it were to fail put the image back on? Is it that simple?

 

[boomerang]

Not quite.

I'm trying to use an image I made with Drive Image to restore to my two 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 right now. I can restore the image, but it won't boot. Gets almost to the Windows screen and keeps rebooting.

I think I know what the problem is, and what it will take to make it work. I'll report back later with what I've learned.

Update:
Well it's not going well. First off, let me explain further. I have two 37GB Raptors in RAID 0. I am trying to restore from an image I made of this array onto two 74GB Raptors in Raid 0.

I believe the problem is related to drive enumeration and how XP deals with it. After doing some research, I tried the following;

Booted off a Win98 boot floppy and did an fdisk /mbr. No luck.
Found a utility at the Symantec site called BTINI which would allow me to view the BOOT.INI under NTFS. I could then copy that file, edit it and copy it back. Problem is the utility evidently doesn't work with SATA. Obviously, no luck.

There is an upgrade for Drive Image. No explanation of what is actually upgraded. I intend to run that and try again, but I don't hold any hope for this.

I guess I could boot of my XP CD and do a restore or repair or whatever (need to do more research). From the little research I have done, I believe this will work.

What's most upsetting is that I have been doing backup images daily from this array for the last year. Going along fat, dumb and happy, figuring I was a restore away from recovering from a disaster. I now know this is not so. I still have everything backed up. I could do a fresh install of XP and restore files and folders from the image though, so it hasn't been a total waste.

I have emailed the Acronis people asking if their product will work in this situation. Waiting for an answer.

I'll post back when I know more.

 

[skiddy]

Running two 37gb raptors on a SiI3112 controller (from NF7-S) in a 32k stripe and it has worked flawlessly so far (although it has only been a week heh). They are amazingly fast... it loads a battlefield vietnam map in about 10 seconds or so. I've also had two WD 80gig 8mb cahce drives running RAID 0 on a highpoint controller for about 4 months and no problems what so ever.

 

[apoppin]

I am thinking about UPgrading to a SINGLE Raptor - 36GB.

How MUCH faster than a 7200 (say arecent Maxtor IDE)?

Has the price been dropping or staying constant? Currently the 74GB is $215 from NewEgg and the 36.7 is $117 . . . expect any further drops?

Does WD have any COMPETITION from the other HD mfgs? Or is it the pinnacle of the Sata/ide (nonSCSI) drives?

 

[Celeryman]

I just got two of the 74gb raptors in raid 0 and I love them. Windows comes up quickly, and so do game maps. If you want high performance without spending over a $1000 then they are the way to go.

 

[Tab]

Agreed, I know its fast. I am curious as to how restoring the drives work since these would be for my O/S. I'd problely use my 120 for backup of the images and storage and then a 250Gb for uh.... files....
Lets say your RAID 0 drive dies one you, you've got nothing on the 120 expect you're images of the drives? How do you go about putting them backon? Would you need another computer with the program that would put the image back on?

 

[pelikan]

I just had a raptor die. The power connector started to fail occasionally. I had to unplug and replug the molex for it to boot. WD's advance RMA was a breeze.

 

[Yvo]

2x 74gb raptors bought in Jan 04... 0 problems to date.

 

[cbuchach]

Originally posted by: pelikan
I just had a raptor die. The power connector started to fail occasionally. I had to unplug and replug the molex for it to boot. WD's advance RMA was a breeze.

I noticed the same thing on one of my Raptors after having the case open. THe drive would spin up and slow down after wiggling the Molex xonnector. I switched it over to the SATA power connector and have had no problems since.

I have been running my dual Raptors on the Intel southbridge in RAID0 for over a year now with no problems.