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RAID 0 (striping) or NOT? PLEASE HELP

S

Sparxxx

Junior Member
HI!
I have the following dilemma.
I wanted to buy 2 HDD of 80GB each (Hiatchi 7K250) with 2MB BUFFER and connect them in RAID 0 (striping).
But a friend of mine told me I better buy 1 HDD of 160GB (Hitachi 7K250) with 8MB BUFFER?
What should I do? What is the best option?
PLEASE HELP me and give me some advice on this
Thanks

PS: If i were to choose RAID 0 what HDD brand should i choose (for best performance)?
 
Originally posted by: Sparxxx
Hmmmm i think i'm still atracted for the RAID option cause it's MUCH faster,i saw at a friend
Click to expand...

lol... ok if you say so. much faster is generally subjective... but how much is the difference between the 80GB 2mb and an 80GB 8mb?
 
not even 5% between 2mb buffer an 8mb buffer but between 2 HDD in RAID 0 and 1 normal HDD the difference is almost 50% faster for RAID if not more. BUT RAID has also it's disadvatages.If 1 drive or partition is damaged EVERY data is lost.
 
...oh sorry... i meant the difference in price. If the 8mb version of the 80gb isn't that much more then it would be wise to go for that one instead of the 2mb. 🙂
 
only do raid0 if you will backup religiously, or for scratch / system disk

otherwise, raid1 gives you same read speed as raid0, with much less hassle...
 
Originally posted by: tart666
only do raid0 if you will backup religiously, or for scratch / system disk

otherwise, raid1 gives you same read speed as raid0, with much less hassle...
Click to expand...

RAID 1 is actually mirroring... so no actual improvement in speed... but does give you increased security. 🙂
 
Real world dofferences with a RAID0 array are usually, at most, about 20%, and that is under ideal conditions. RAID0 will have almost no tangible benefit unless you are working with things like video editing, for example. RAID0 for the average desktop computer, IMO, is mostly for show, not for real benefit. You claim a 50% speed difference as well. I'd like to know a few things: How did you come to that number? Just guessing, or do you have a benchmark to back it up? What were you doing to measure the difference?

only do raid0 if you will backup religiously, or for scratch / system disk
Click to expand...
IMO, religios backups of important data is essential, regardless of whether or not you are using RAIDo. If you value your data, back it up. To removable media, preferably. Stored off site.
otherwise, raid1 gives you same read speed as raid0, with much less hassle...
Click to expand...
Compared to RAID0, RAID1 decreases write performace as data has to be written twice, not just once. On the flip side, read performance is enhanced since data can be read from two places, rather than just one. If you want the benefit of RAID0 speed and RAID1 mirroring, you need to go with something like RAID1+0. I'd suggest reading the wonderful RAID FAQ here at AnandTech for some good info. Personally, RAID0 for most things is a waste and is unneeded. And I challenge you to give me proof of a 50% or more increase in actual speed, not "percieved speed".

\Dan
 
Originally posted by: tart666
only do raid0 if you will backup religiously, or for scratch / system disk

otherwise, raid1 gives you same read speed as raid0, with much less hassle...
Click to expand...

I have RAID 0 and I never back up anything.... What's the worst that could happen? I have to reinstall windows? Oooooh! Scary! Of course, my computer is for fun and games.
 
Originally posted by: Nebor
I have RAID 0 and I never back up anything.... What's the worst that could happen? I have to reinstall windows? Oooooh! Scary! Of course, my computer is for fun and games.
Click to expand...
you must be bloody lucky... I had 4 drive failures in the past 12 months... 4 unplanned re-installs = 8 hrs wasted.

With raid0 would have been 8 = 16 hrs wasted... i should really create OS disk images...
 
I have RAID 0, its fun, it is a nice jump in speed when loading, playing games, and doing some vidoe editing.

Running a raid is just the same as runing a single drive, but with a speed boost. If your single drive fails you lost it all if one of your dives fail in the raid you lost it all.

Just get some relable drives and you should be fine. I love my 2 WD 120GB in RAID 0.

I just every once in a while burn a CD of my documents and some programs that would take too long to download again, and call it good.

other than that i hardly ever back up.
 
StorageReview.com FAQ - How much faster is RAID0 than a single drive?

Tests the same drives in RAID0 and single. Basically, to sum up,

SR office drivemark RAID0 adds 7.8%
SR high end adds 9.38%
SR bootup adds 65%
SR Gaming adds 2%

So if your primary judge of performance is how fast Windows starts, RAID0 is amazing. Otherwise, you can listen to all the forum postings you want, or you can take the advice of the most highly regarded hard drive review site on the net. Your choice, as always.
 
Sorry...but if you have to ask, you don't need it 🙂 If you really feel the need, then buy WD or Maxtor, doesn't make a difference. The only place you'll feel any real speed increase is in large file transfers.
 
Originally posted by: EeyoreXCompared to RAID0, RAID1 decreases write performace as data has to be written twice, not just once. On the flip side, read performance is enhanced since data can be read from two places, rather than just one. If you want the benefit of RAID0 speed and RAID1 mirroring, you need to go with something like RAID1+0. I'd suggest reading the wonderful RAID FAQ here at AnandTech for some good info. Personally, RAID0 for most things is a waste and is unneeded. And I challenge you to give me proof of a 50% or more increase in actual speed, not "percieved speed".

\Dan
Click to expand...

In *theory*, RAID1 shouldn't hurt your write performance, assuming your RAID controller can write to both disks at the same time. In practice, however, one of the disks will often be busy servicing a read request while you are trying to write, which means your writes will take a bit longer (probably like a 10-20% performance hit on average, I'd guess, unless your disks are exceptionally busy). And obviously, if your RAID controller writes sequentially, it will take twice as long to write anything.

 
Originally posted by: mrzed
SR Gaming adds 2%
Click to expand...
That is the key right there. Most of us care very little about how fast Office programs work, since they are fast enough. Also few of us care how fast Windows boots - so what if it is 10 seconds instead of 15 for Win XP. It is the gaming benchmark that we will definately notice and thus is most important to most of us. A whopping 2% lead for all that hassle, possible cost, and reduction of reliability. For another review check Anandtech's IDE RAID guide. In Anandtech's guide in most tests no RAID beat most of the RAID 0 options! Only in a couple of tests was RAID 0 always faster - but even then the speed increase was only 3%-13%, no where near your 50% claim.

The 8 MB buffer can add a significant speed boost - definately outpacing the 2% boost in gaming from using RAID 0. Plus it avoids all the potential RAID problems. Thus I'd never suggest RAID 0 for the gamer.
 
RAID-0 does have noticable improvements in loading Windows itself and loading things in games.

I used to have a RAID-0 array myself.

As for the losing of data thing, I don't think it's a huge issue. I find that drives are very reliable anyways, but let's say you're comparing losing data on a 2x HDD RAID-0 and a single drive as well as a RAID-1 configuration. I believe that the user, virus or a normal program will more likely accientally delete/corrupt those important files. So backing up religiously should be a must regardless of you disk setup.

No, you're not going to notice Office loading faster... IE... your IMs or whatever. Thing are not going to be 50% faster.

As said before, if you have to ask, you don't need it.

If really want to try, it would only be worth it if you had a RAID controller (on your mobo or a PCI one). If you had to buy one, then no, it wouldn't be worth it.
 
Building a Raid array that is best suited to your needs takes a lot of thought and tuning. Be careful what you read, synthetic tests will always look spectacular on a Raid 0 vs a single ide drive. Fact is most Raid arrays handle the drives cache very poorly. A better comparison would be to compare a Raid 0 to 2 single ide drives on their own channels.

Loading of OS/apps can actually be slower on a Raid vs single drive, the reason is that all data must pass through a controller and be striped. For large digital pics or video this is very beneficial, but for smaller files it adds a lot of overhead.

A very safe and high performance way to go would be to load Os apps on separate drives on their own channels.
 
Originally posted by: tallman45
Building a Raid array that is best suited to your needs takes a lot of thought and tuning. Be careful what you read, synthetic tests will always look spectacular on a Raid 0 vs a single ide drive. Fact is most Raid arrays handle the drives cache very poorly. A better comparison would be to compare a Raid 0 to 2 single ide drives on their own channels.

Loading of OS/apps can actually be slower on a Raid vs single drive, the reason is that all data must pass through a controller and be striped. For large digital pics or video this is very beneficial, but for smaller files it adds a lot of overhead.

A very safe and high performance way to go would be to load Os apps on separate drives on their own channels.
Click to expand...

😀

IOW use your brain and parallelize workloads.

 
Loading levels is a bit faster, otherwise you won't notice it in games. However RAID 0 is nice as it does make your system "feel" more responsive, as you almost never max out the transfer rate of the combined array. IOW, the average and max transfer rate don't really change too much, but the performance doesn't dip as much as 1 single drive usually does with lots of apps going at once.

Also, RAID 1 can potentially give you increased read speeds, it's just that most of the cheap controllers that most people buy don't implement that aspect of it. Writing to disk is of course slower, but it is possible for both disks to be read in parallel with the right controller.(Don't ask me which one, as I haven't really looked for specific models and I'd imagine that their past the price range most people would pay for just RAID 1.)
 
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