Raid 0 vs 2 separate HD.

[LeeTJ]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: LeeTJ
except you were wrong about risk. you increase risk of losing everything if you raid 0. if you use 2 hd, you reduce the risk of losing everything.

this is assuming no backup. obviously you should have everything backed up. but it's also about recovery time. even if you have everything backed up, ur recovery time will be less with 2 hd than with 1 striped volume.

as i said in my initial post, if you have 1 HD for OS / Data and the other drive for Program files, backup is simple, just Image both drives. One drive goes out, you only need to restore ONE drive. a lot less time than restoring an entire stripe.

Which is why god invented Clone CD, Daemon tools, and massive amounts of cheap IDE storage. Even in the situation you described above, an OS/Data or Program File loss, you don't save much time. If your OS/Data drive dies, you lose a replaceable OS, but all of your irreplaceable data files. You also lose the links between your apps and your OS. This isn't as big a deal with games, as they can be launched standalone for the most part, but many apps simply won't run unless you perform some type of repair on them, which isn't much different from a fresh installation of the app. Anyone running RAID 0 w/out backup storage off the array should be shot, so I don't even think that comparison is relevant.

I keep a bit-by-bit image (thru CloneCD) of all my install CDs, games and any other frequently used apps that need to be in the CD drive on both my RAID array and my backup drive. If my RAID array dies (unlikely since I've only had 1 drive ever die on me, and it was a DeathStar), I'll be quickly up and running again with all my data and app images safely stored on my backup drive. MTBF is reduced on my backup drive b/c it simply isn't in operation 95% of the time, mostly for simple writes when I backup or save to it.

Launching games w/out any spin-up or disc-swapping is awesome in its own right. I'm not sure if I would bother to if I didn't have the gobs of storage that a RAID 0 array provides; I might be more concerned with capacity if I was running 2 drives instead of 1 massive array.

Chiz

chiz.

i said IMAGE. that's what i meant. i just used the one word image because i thought it would be generic vs using GHOST which would imply norton.

if you ghost / image your drive you'll have all the connections your talking about. i also said earlier you could backup using windows backup, your system state. that would also do the same thing.

 

[paralazarguer]

Which is why god invented Clone CD, Daemon tools, and massive amounts of cheap IDE storage.

GOD DID THAT!?!?!?! Man, elaborate bytes are going to hell for taking credit for God's work...man, imagine pirating god's software.
OH MAN! OH MAN! I've stolen from God!

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: paralazarguer

Which is why god invented Clone CD, Daemon tools, and massive amounts of cheap IDE storage.

GOD DID THAT!?!?!?! Man, elaborate bytes are going to hell for taking credit for God's work...man, imagine pirating god's software.
OH MAN! OH MAN! I've stolen from God!

Slow down there Cochese, who said anything about pirating? Backing up a CD for a program you purchased doesn't break any EULA's, if you distribute or sell it that's a different story. There's also nothing in the EULA that says I can't launch a program with a virtual drive instead of a physical drive, so what's the problem? Its simply a matter of convenience for me. I find disc-swapping to be a major PITA, if you choose to do so, more power to you. I've also set-up a very fast and efficient method of reformatting/reinstalling an OS and all apps/games etc. that requires a single swapping of a disc, my XP CD. Its probably why I don't find Windows installations to be as tedious as others around here.

Chiz

 

[Vic]

Whoa. Should I join this flame war? Guess I can't help myself....
Uhh... just my insight and experience in this matter. After running RAID-0 for quite some time, I decided to go back to JBOD just for ease of use and piece of mind reasons (the risk of failure IS higher with RAID-0 than with JBOD, end of story).
From my experience, yes: RAID-0 is faster. But... if you run 2 identical drives on 2 separate IDE channels (and those being the only drives on those channels) with the pagefile on a small (2-3GB) FAT32 partition at the front of the drive on the 2nd channel (and all OS and program files on the drive on the 1st channel), you will get excellent performance. Not quite RAID-0, but close... and more reliable.

 

[LeeTJ]

Originally posted by: Vic
Whoa. Should I join this flame war? Guess I can't help myself....
Uhh... just my insight and experience in this matter. After running RAID-0 for quite some time, I decided to go back to JBOD just for ease of use and piece of mind reasons (the risk of failure IS higher with RAID-0 than with JBOD, end of story).
From my experience, yes: RAID-0 is faster. But... if you run 2 identical drives on 2 separate IDE channels (and those being the only drives on those channels) with the pagefile on a small (2-3GB) FAT32 partition at the front of the drive on the 2nd channel (and all OS and program files on the drive on the 1st channel), you will get excellent performance. Not quite RAID-0, but close... and more reliable.

thank you.

that's about what i expected.

obviously performance means different things to everyone based upon their usage. for my usage i think the 2 separate HD's as 2 Separate volumes is the most effective. with Win 2k Pro and above OS, you have the option of mounting one of the HD's as a FOLDER in the C:\. that's very convenient.

 

[BoberFett]

If the pagefile is your speed concern, buy more RAM and forget about memory swapping to disk.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
If the pagefile is your speed concern, buy more RAM and forget about memory swapping to disk.

pwned


page files = suck

 

[paralazarguer]

I download about 50 things all at the same time in P2P programS. Now, that many little bits of data causes the HDD to thrash like made just trying to keep up (Ultra HSE DSL) and it slows the computer down something horrible. Having a drive dedicated just for P2p and FTP would solve this problem. Raid 0 wouldn't.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: paralazarguer
I download about 50 things all at the same time in P2P programS. Now, that many little bits of data causes the HDD to thrash like made just trying to keep up (Ultra HSE DSL) and it slows the computer down something horrible. Having a drive dedicated just for P2p and FTP would solve this problem. Raid 0 wouldn't.

You're probably right about that particular instance.

RAID is not the solution to every problem. But the original poster dismissed it completely which is just ignorant.

 

[LeeTJ]

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: paralazarguer
I download about 50 things all at the same time in P2P programS. Now, that many little bits of data causes the HDD to thrash like made just trying to keep up (Ultra HSE DSL) and it slows the computer down something horrible. Having a drive dedicated just for P2p and FTP would solve this problem. Raid 0 wouldn't.

You're probably right about that particular instance.

RAID is not the solution to every problem. But the original poster dismissed it completely which is just ignorant.

hahaha, using big words again are we?

i never dismissed it. quite the contrary, my problem was with the members who post here and make it seem like raid 0 is the answer for everything.

"what is it w/ this board and Raid 0? "

see, that was the whole point. u are the one just completely dismissing the idea of NOT using raid 0. i never dismissed it. i asked questions.

 

[BoberFett]

hahaha, using big words again are we?

Big words? I'm sorry, is a two syllable word too much for your neanderthal brain top handle? I quote

what real advantage does raid 0 give you?? wouldn't putting your OS on one HD and your Program Files on the 2nd HD give you almost the same performance boost w/o ANY of the risks associated with Raid 0??

How is that not dismissing RAID?

It does give significant performance boosts when reading or writing lots of sequential data. No, putting the OS and Program Files on two hard disks won't give you the same performance boost. The OS loads on startup for the most part with a few scattered calls to load DLLs here and there. Splitting OS and Program Files will give you almost no speed increase either in bootup or in general usage. Whether RAID or two separate drives, neither makes a significant difference in system speed 95% of the time. But try reading a few hundred MB of data into memory (games, multimedia) and you bet your ass RAID is going to stomp all over a single drive.

And you're right, for the most part I am dismissing using two separate drives because it won't do much for you.

 

[paralazarguer]

Bober, I'm not sure what you're on about. I think you're reading his post wrong. He's trying to better understand RAID 0 and how it is better than 2 drives. He's trying to understand the difference, not dismiss it.

 

[BoberFett]

Read his first response to me. He wasn't interested in answers. He started this thread so people would pat him on the head and say "You're right, we don't need this RAID crap. LeeTJ was right all along." Unfortunately he isn't right.

 

[BoberFett]

Oh yeah, and I have a bad attitude. People that bug me get an earful pretty quickly.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Oh yeah, and I have a bad attitude. People that bug me get an earful pretty quickly.

LoL same here. I'm normally a very agreeable fellow, but one can only read so much and remain silent before busting out the war paint and hitting the :QRIOT:Q button.

Chiz

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: LeeTJ
what real advantage does raid 0 give you??

Simple, RAID0 = Speed. Even opponents to RAID0 can?t deny that. Hardcore RAID patrons will on occasion dismiss RAID0 because it?s not a ?real? RAID implementation, no fault tolerance. However this does not change the fact that RAID0 is very capable of pushing large amounts of data at a very high rate, thus decreasing OS load time, application load time, game boot/load time etc.

Some programs that come right off the top of my head that can fully benefit from RAID0 is programs such as PhotoShopX.X. I?ve worked with image files from 200-400MB+, and my RAID0 setup cuts the load, and even more important the conversion time in half. This also goes for games (like BoberFett stated), cutting the load time in half. Even though it?s actually only about 5-10% of the game, some people don?t like to wait, like me.

wouldn't putting your OS on one HD and your Program Files on the 2nd HD give you almost the same performance boost w/o ANY of the risks associated with Raid 0??

what is it w/ this board and Raid 0?

Putting your OS on HD one, and your programs files on HD two, will generate a somewhat RAID0 situation, just without the performance increase. But rather you?ll still have the risk of RAID0. Because what would happen if your first drive died? What would happen if your second drive died? You could boot if your second drive died, but your first drive will be loaded with registry entrees, particular program files etc. If you are willing to install your OS on disk one, and programs on disk two, you might as well do RAID0.

Even if you Ghost, you can?t copy the Ghost image to a disk being copied, so you will need another drive (I use an external FW Maxtor). So backing up two disks will be the same as backing up a RAID0 system (in a sense).

RAID0 is not for everyone. When people ask on this board if RAID0 is for them, I usually never respond. Because if you don?t know if it is for your or not then you obviously have not read up enough about it, or you really don?t need RAID0. I usually tell people to check out the Raid Toolbox for a simple rundown. Though there are other places with much more information. Personally I prefer RAID1, which I?m currently using on my main system. I use RAID0 too, however I use it on my second system.

 

[paralazarguer]

you?ll still have the risk of RAID0. Because what would happen if your first drive died? What would happen if your second drive died?

Not true. If you have two seperate hard drives and one fails, you lose 50% of your data. If you have a RAID 0 config and one hard drive fails, you lose 100% of your data. That's a big difference.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: LeeTJ

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: paralazarguer
I download about 50 things all at the same time in P2P programS. Now, that many little bits of data causes the HDD to thrash like made just trying to keep up (Ultra HSE DSL) and it slows the computer down something horrible. Having a drive dedicated just for P2p and FTP would solve this problem. Raid 0 wouldn't.

You're probably right about that particular instance.

RAID is not the solution to every problem. But the original poster dismissed it completely which is just ignorant.

hahaha, using big words again are we?

i never dismissed it. quite the contrary, my problem was with the members who post here and make it seem like raid 0 is the answer for everything.

"what is it w/ this board and Raid 0? "

see, that was the whole point. u are the one just completely dismissing the idea of NOT using raid 0. i never dismissed it. i asked questions.

Excuse me, but I call Bullsh1t.

You came in hear already knowing the answer you wanted to hear. You then ignored or argued (or flamed) anyone who recommened raid until you finally got one person to partially agree with you and then started with the "I told you so attitude".

I'll skip any intelligent and polite words that I would normally use to provide technical assistance and skip straight to the point: You're a dick.

(and you're still wrong)

 

[MrDudeMan]

what smilin said


damn, i wanted to say something that sweet, but you put it so much better than i ever could have

 

[XBoxLPU]

raid using SCSI drives.....

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
raid using SCSI drives.....

ah, this has shed new light on the subject. IDE raid is basically crap. i mean it helps a lot, yes, but compared to SCSI raid? pfft..

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: paralazarguer

you?ll still have the risk of RAID0. Because what would happen if your first drive died? What would happen if your second drive died?

Not true. If you have two seperate hard drives and one fails, you lose 50% of your data. If you have a RAID 0 config and one hard drive fails, you lose 100% of your data. That's a big difference.

If you think about it closely there is virtually no difference when writing across two drives. Regarding hardware if one drive dies you still need to buy/RMA/install a new drive etc. Regarding software, you still need to reinstall the OS, software/apps etc. Also note that you don?t lose 50% of your data if one drive dies, you actually lose more, both drives are not acting as one drive, or yet sliptting data across both drives. They are both independent drives (100% of HD 1 + 100% of HD 2 = 200%).

Assuming you are doing what LeeTJ described, precisely 100% of your OS will be on drive one, and roughly 99.8+% of your applications/programs will be on the second drive (?roughly? pertains to various files which will be copied to drive one). If you lose either drive you are losing way more then 50%. For example if drive one dies you lose 100% of the OS, and whatever files saved if any to drive one (thus 100% of drive one). If drive two dies you are losing approximately 99.8+% of your applications/programs, and ?various files?, which get copied to drive one, which are rather useless if you lose either drive. That was my point when I stated, ?will generate a somewhat RAID0 situation? and ?risk of RAID0?, spanning can result into similar consequences if one drive dies.

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
raid using SCSI drives.....

Now you're talking! Wish I had the money for one SCSI drive (at least 50+GB).

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: NOX

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
raid using SCSI drives.....

Now you're talking! Wish I had the money for one SCSI drive (at least 50+GB).

I was SCSI back in the 10k rpm / 80Mbit / Ultra 2 days. Yep no doubt about it SCSI rocks. BUT GAWD is it expensive. I think single SCSI vs IDE RAID is nearly a tossup on performance and price but the IDE solution will give you about 5 times the drive space for the same $$$ I think the ideal solution for price and performance is a small SCSI drive for OS, swapfile and whatnot and then a massive IDE for all your mp3s and stuff.

I'd love to get twin 72gig 15k rpm 320mb/s drives on a nice 64 bit controller....course I'd love to get a new car too

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
what smilin said


damn, i wanted to say something that sweet, but you put it so much better than i ever could have

What can I say? The a55hole inspired me.