Raid 0 vs raid 1

[dejunjing]

Can you compare raid 0 and raid 1, advantage and disadvantage.

My computer will not be used for server purpose, so backup is not important. I hope to use my two SATA hard drives for faster speed, not for data backup. Could you please give me a suggestion on choosing which one? Thanks.

 

[Hajime]

RAID-0 gives a tiny amount of added speed in both reads and writes, and doubles hd space of the smallest drive.

RAID-1 gives a tiny amount of added speed (greater then RAID-0, actually, from what I've seen) when reading, but you lose a tiny bit of speed when writing. It gives you the hd space of the smallest drive.

You'll probably be doing reading for at -least- 90% of your hd accesses, so RAID-1 will actually likely serve you better.

 

[dejunjing]

I guess I will do lots of video editing, CAD, numerical computing (continuously writing data to hard drive)

I googled raid, looks like raid is not useful. So, why so many people mention this? Just because it is a popular DIY word? I regret a little for buying 2 HD now.

 

[Hajime]

RAID is useful. But only in the proper applications.

RAID-0 is -NOT- useful for consumer applications in almost all uses (I can think of a handful of exceptions offhand).

 

[ThePiston]

IMO, I would not do ANY raid. There's barely any performace benefit... only more of a chance that one of your drives or the array will go bad.

 

[stevennoland]

Don't regret the purchase of the second drive. If you not going to RAID, use just one drive and keep the second as a spare.

I had a RAID 0 with two 36GB Raptors and I loved it. The transition in levels during Halo were way less noticeable with the RAID 0 vs just one drive.

I cannot comment about RAID 1. Never used it.

I have read that with certain software a RAID 0 or 1 actually hurt performance.

My advice if your going to do a RAID, go for the RAID 0!

 

[dejunjing]

So why still so many guys are using raid?

 

[Hajime]

dejun: I use RAID-1 myself. Backups are good, and it has a slight performance benefit for what I need.

However, there are always people that are convinced that RAID somehow, magically, gives them huge performance benefits when empirical testing says otherwise. I've always said that I could convince someone that a SMP P2 400 is faster then the latest chip.

 

[dejunjing]

I ever had two 250G Maxtor UATA133 hard drives. Since people said SATA is better, I sold them and bought two 120G WD SATA hard drives, because SATA Raid is very popular. Now it seems I made a wrong decision even though I made money from this transaction.

Now, I use two 120G WD SATA hard drives, and one 120G WD ATA100 HD. So, do you think I should use SATA raid as starting disk for WInXP and applications and use ATA100 as data disk is good? Or use ATA100 as system disk and use SATA as data disk? I am concerning ATA100 is too slow for system.

 

[SadisticOne]

RAID1= Mirroring. The big point isn't performance, but that essentially both drives hold duplicate information. If one dies, the data isn't gone.

If you have data on a drive that you can't afford to lose, you should use RAID1 (at least,) and maintain a backup.

Drives can, and will, die. Its actually only a matter of time. Using S.M.A.R.T. helps, but its not a guarantee.

 

[dejunjing]

Yes, my data is generally important and I do not want to loose them, so looks like I need to use SATA as data disk. However, Do you think using ATA100 as system disk will bring compromise to performance compared with using SATA150 as system disk?

 

[SadisticOne]

The interface type (ATA100, SATA150) is a theoretical limit of the interface. Its likely that if the disks have the same rotational speed (probably 7200RPM) and cache size 8mb is common these days, then they will have comparable transfer rates.

It shouldn't be a huge compromise, no.

You might want to look at moving your profile onto the data drive, if thats RAID1 and your system disk is not. Look at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314843 for info on XP for this