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RAID 0 reliability?

H

Hender

Senior member
I'm thinking about picking up a second IBM 75GXP 30 GB hard drive to add to the one I already have, and then hooking them up to an IDE RAID controller (probably the one built-in to the MB I'm thinking of picking up this summer, an EPoX 8K7A+) to get ~60 GB of combined space. This is not my primary drive, rather a storage drive where I keep my MP3s, movie trailers, documents, etc, just stuff I've archived, and while I would much rather get another SCSI drive (my primary is an 18 GB IBM UltraStar), big SCSI drives are quite pricey, even ones off e_Bay. My point is, I'm not concerned about the speed, just the extra space, and a second drive would be cheaper than a whole new one (and less headache backing up 20 GB on CDs!), particularly SCSI.

So my question is, how reliable is RAID 0? I've never actually had a hard drive fail on me, but the RAID process adds an interesting monkey wrench into the whole situation. Anyone running RAID 0 ever have any trouble, either IDE or SCSI RAID?
 
storagereview.com has reported some malfunctions with the ibm 75gxp hdisks. Try going with the new 60gxp hdisks instead if you choose raid 0.
 
RAID 0 has no reliability. If one of the 2 drives ever fail, goodby to everything that was on there. If you use Raid 1 you wasted drive space but you wont lose your data. Is the data important to you?
 
Well, it's only as reliable as the drives you use. So the question should be, how reliable is the IBM 75GXP?

I've never had a raid 0 setup fail in the past, but i've stopped utilizing it because it created headaches when I upgraded and didn't really see any realworld benefits outside of those artificial benchmarks. Eh... it's up to you in the end.
 
Well, of course the data is important to me, and I realize that RAID 0 has no backup should something go wrong, but my question is, has anyone ever had something go wrong with RAID 0 and then lose their data? I saw plenty of posts from people who say they are using RAID 0 and love the speed increase, but what are the odds of something failing vs. a single drive failing and losing everything anyways?
 
I'm positive somebody somewhere has had a drive go bad while running RAID 0. I don't know what the odds are, but obviously the more drives you have the higher the odds you'll get a drive that will fail. I had a 15GB 75GXP fail on me after a couple months of good quiet performance (i wasn't using RAID). However, i don't think using RAID 0 increases the chances of either drive failing anymore so then not using RAID 0. I suggest just backup important data to CD-Rs.
 
Each drive is not going to fail more often, but your chance of loosing data is greatly increased...I think it's either twice as much, or squared. A few weeks ago I saw a graph of RAID reliability, but I can't remember where I saw it.
 
I'm pretty sure it should be twice the probability of failure.

If either drive fails you're scr@wed.

RAID 0 s/b called AID cause there is no Redundancy.
 
Depends if drive failure is based on 1.how much work the drive has to do or 2.how long it runs.

Case 1
~Same probability
Case 2
~Twice the probability

...for failure.

The truth, like beauty and virtue, is probably in the mean
 


<< Well, it's only as reliable as the drives you use. So the question should be, how reliable is the IBM 75GXP?

I've never had a raid 0 setup fail in the past, but i've stopped utilizing it because it created headaches when I upgraded and didn't really see any realworld benefits outside of those artificial benchmarks. Eh... it's up to you in the end. >>



Wow ! Not just SAD...He's smart too !

Get a big drive and setup RAID 1. I would steer clear of IBM for now....Personal experience but I almost hesitate to recommend any IDE HDD .
All I can say is in customers machines I now install Maxtor Diamond Max Plus's....

No thrill. Just crossing my fingers and waiting.

My personal rig has a Max 40 Primary with C: at 10 gigs, holding 7.5 gig (OS and programs)
I did a drive copy to a used ata 33 10 gig, bagged it, and put it on the shelf.
All of my MP3, video , pics, zipped programs and documents sit in the second (F: ) 30 of that drive.
In my slave drive (G: )....30 gig Maxtor is a mirror of that(F: ).
About once a month I copy the MP3, Email, address books, Pics , all of it over from F: to to G: It gives me a chance to organize and clean out garbage too.
If a drive dies I can be up and runninn nearly, otr totally identical in Oh.......3 minutes ?

Nutty ? It works very well for me....Highly recommend it..Not over RAID, of course but it works....
 
RAID 0 AND reliability do not belong in the same sentance, i have known a few people that have gottone screwed by a drive dieing or slowly failing(you try to figure out which drive is screwing up when the Diagnostics say its fine, died 2 day later) If you want reliablility set up a REAL raid array(1,5) if you want speed then go for 0, or go for 0 and get a Good fast tape drive.
 
Well, I've only been running my array for about 5 months so I can't really say how stable this will be. I do like the speed though. With drive prices the way they are now I think it's a worthwhile endeavor.


ST4R,

 


<< I suggest just backup important data to CD-Rs. >>


Who does not do this? But I think many people...according to the number of members complaining massive data losses if their harddrive dies for any reason...😕
so backup...or it's your own fault...😛
 
If you buy a quality hdisk, chances are u'r not going to get a failure if u'r running a striped disk array (raid 0). I have many friends who use the raid 0 without any problems at all. I'm going to be stepping up to a raid 0 rig with 2 ibm 60gxp 20.0GB hdisks soon and I would recommend this setup also. IMHO, raid 0 may indeed be more likely to fail and suffer from data loss, but I still think it's very unlikely if you have the right gear.

-dejacky
 
If you have anything important, keep it on a second drive or do backups. Best would be to go ahead and make a RAID 1 array of smaller drives.. the good safe karma will balance the evil fast and unreliable karma of the RAID 0 array.
 
blah, reliability. thats nothing. if u really cared about it, i dunno. i dont think much of it. all my documents and mp3's and zipz or stored on a seperate 5400 rpm hd. nothing important is onthe raid. if i lost a drive, i wouldnt really care. =) besides, tape and RAID 5!?! [scsi, not sure of ide raid 5] are too expensive. raid 1 defeats the purpose of conventional users going for speed.
 
I tried RAID0 on my A7V133, and also saw no noticable increase in performance outside a few benchmarking programs; it's not worth the hassle, but I guess if you want to try it and find out for yourself, go for it.
 
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