RAID 0

[TheMafioso]

Hi Guys,

I have a 80 GB HDD, and i recently bought another 80 GB HDD. I'm thinking of setting up RAID 0.

My system config
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
MSI KM400 Mobo
1 GB RAM
Geforce 6600gt
Creative SB Audigy Gamer

As u can see, my system has become somewhat old now and new games can only be played at med-low settings.I'm holding back on upgrade, as i'm thinking of upgrading to dual core system direct, when it becomes more affordable.

So tell me, what kind of performance boost can i expect from RAID 0, will my system startup time, reduce and would it help in gaming......is it worth making data less secure ?

Thanx, any kind of help appericiated
Regards

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Using the search function would have given you a bunch of threads regarding RAID 0.

Anandtech did an article about RAID 0 as well:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=10

 

[TheMafioso]

Okay, Thanx for link
But i have one last query, The article have tested RAID with WD Raptor series of HDD's which is already very fast having Buffer Size of 8 MB. I have Seagate 7200.9 Series HDDs with 2MB Buffer Size, would the results be similar to this ?

 

[phantom404]

Im using raid zero and I have configured the drives with non raid as well and I can say that I notice a difference in load times and copying alot of stuff over from my hd to my external seemed to go faster as well. My drives have 16mb of cache so I'm not sure how much 8 or 2 will do.

 

[Bobthelost]

I really doubt that transfering files from an internal RAID array to an external drive is any faster, mainly because the bottleneck is going to be the external drive anyway.

Putting your drive in RAID would increase speed a little, but not all that much. You would not see any benifits in gaming and since you'd be using an old drive the risk of losing everything is greatly increased.

You may see an improvement in windows boot speed, but you'd see more from a reinstall or msconfig cleanup.

 

[phantom404]

using raid in gaming gives you faster load times specially games like bf2

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: phantom404
using raid in gaming gives you faster load times specially games like bf2

That's the rumour, but i'm yet to see a review that says it does. The recent seagate review here showed a LONGER load time for the RAID array.

 

[aboothman]

ya reviews are great and all, but what about REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE.

In many of these discussions, it is left to the perspective of the person using it. It is the same idea as saying that time goes slower when you are bored. It does not REALLY go slower,
but if you FEEL like it is going slower, so in essence it IS going slower to you.
That having been said, maybe I am deluding myself into believing that my RAID 0 array
is faster. That does not really matter tho, because to me it is faster. It only matters on a global perspective.

Sorry to go off topic. I say try RAID-0 and find out. Make sure to backup anything important, and if you do not feel it is faster, split em up. Just remember you have to format and reinstall your OS when you create of split up an array.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: aboothman
ya reviews are great and all, but what about REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE.

In many of these discussions, it is left to the perspective of the person using it. It is the same idea as saying that time goes slower when you are bored. It does not REALLY go slower,
but if you FEEL like it is going slower, so in essence it IS going slower to you.
That having been said, maybe I am deluding myself into believing that my RAID 0 array
is faster. That does not really matter tho, because to me it is faster. It only matters on a global perspective.

Sorry to go off topic. I say try RAID-0 and find out. Make sure to backup anything important, and if you do not feel it is faster, split em up. Just remember you have to format and reinstall your OS when you create of split up an array.

If you get faster load times after installing a RAID0 array because you reinstalled XP rather than from the array then you might have gotten even faster load times without the array in place.

It matters everytime you say "RAID0 FTW" because it helps delude other people and lessen thier gaming experience. I don't really give a flying monkeys about how your computer is set up, but i get annoyed by people posting shite (not refering to you here, but a lot of RAID 0 afficinados don't know ****** about the topic).

 

[Tostada]

It's really unfortunate that StorageReview doesn't include RAID0 benchmarks in their main database. That would really cut down on seeing this thread 10X a day if you could point to specific numbers showing that RAID0 offers extremely minimal performance inrease and a single Raptor 150 crushes 2 x Raptor 74s in real-world use.

 

[phantom404]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: phantom404
using raid in gaming gives you faster load times specially games like bf2

That's the rumour, but i'm yet to see a review that says it does. The recent seagate review here showed a LONGER load time for the RAID array.

Considering Im using Raid right now and I have tried it without the Raid using the same drives trust me..there is a difference.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: phantom404

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: phantom404
using raid in gaming gives you faster load times specially games like bf2

That's the rumour, but i'm yet to see a review that says it does. The recent seagate review here showed a LONGER load time for the RAID array.

Considering Im using Raid right now and I have tried it without the Raid using the same drives trust me..there is a difference.

No i won't. Namely because i'm not convinced you know what you're talking about. Which is one of the main reasons i want a comparison from a trustworthy website.

 

[Tostada]

Stop being an idiot, Bob. There are numerous sites which show that level load times are probably the most (actually, the only) significant benefit of RAID0 outside server and video editing applications.

 

[Bobthelost]

Thing is that there are just as many sites that show otherwise. Anandtech being one of them.

 

[leegroves86]

good point

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Thing is that there are just as many sites that show otherwise. Anandtech being one of them.

Where do you see that? The only RAID0 benchmarks I can see on AT don't even include gaming performance.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Thing is that there are just as many sites that show otherwise. Anandtech being one of them.

Where do you see that? The only RAID0 benchmarks I can see on AT don't even include gaming performance.

I refer the right honourable gentleman to the following page:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2682&p=7

Also to the storage review thread on RAID0 is it worth it?

 

[phantom404]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: phantom404

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: phantom404
using raid in gaming gives you faster load times specially games like bf2

That's the rumour, but i'm yet to see a review that says it does. The recent seagate review here showed a LONGER load time for the RAID array.

Considering Im using Raid right now and I have tried it without the Raid using the same drives trust me..there is a difference.

Thats fine. I know my setup is faster with raid 0 then without. I'm sure some systems might be slower with Raid 0 depending on their hardware installed but to go out and say I dont know what I'm talking about when I'm sitting here running raid 0 is just stupid.


No i won't. Namely because i'm not convinced you know what you're talking about. Which is one of the main reasons i want a comparison from a trustworthy website.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Thing is that there are just as many sites that show otherwise. Anandtech being one of them.

Where do you see that? The only RAID0 benchmarks I can see on AT don't even include gaming performance.

Look harder.

A fairly definitive SR article on this topic.

Finally, we come to the SR Gaming DriveMark, a weighted average of the drive accesses generated by five popular PC games. The flat slopes indicate that gaming uses benefit least from both RAID and command queuing. In fact, at 677 I/Os per second, a 4 drive Cheetah array operating off of the Acceleraid 170 lags a single Raptor running on the "dumbest" of SATA controllers by a margin of 9%.

It's not that it doesn't make it faster -- it just doesn't make enough of a difference in gaming to justify spending any extra money on it, and RAID0 has the issue of reduced overall reliability (although this is usually overblown IMO).

 

[phantom404]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Thing is that there are just as many sites that show otherwise. Anandtech being one of them.

Where do you see that? The only RAID0 benchmarks I can see on AT don't even include gaming performance.

I refer the right honourable gentleman to the following page:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2682&p=7

Also to the storage review thread on RAID0 is it worth it?

"We also benchmarked a couple of these drives in a RAID-0 array as a brief look at RAID performance with results that were pleasing to our eyes. The 160GB unit churned out 561 operations per second in our Business Winstone 2004 IPEAK capture benchmark and 378 operations per second in the Content Creation portion of that benchmark. The RAID-0 array, which we set up with two of these 160GB units, produced the highest numbers that we have seen at 869 and 599 operations per second in both the Business Winstone and Content Creation Winstone 2005 IPEAK benchmarks, respectively. The RAID-0 array topped even the best performing drive that we have seen yet, Western Digital's 74GB 10,000RPM Raptor. We are itching to see the performance of a RAID-0 array with the new 150GB Raptors! The RAID-0 array also cuts the write service time in half from 8.67ms to 4.67ms."

Sounds like RAID-0 did pretty good. That was from the link you provided. It doesnt say anything about games but it does give a performace boost otherways

 

[TheMafioso]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Thing is that there are just as many sites that show otherwise. Anandtech being one of them.

Where do you see that? The only RAID0 benchmarks I can see on AT don't even include gaming performance.

I refer the right honourable gentleman to the following page:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2682&p=7

Also to the storage review thread on RAID0 is it worth it?

But Bob that AT review shows, the load time has increased in 2 of the 3 games tested when using RAID.
I've finally decided, no RAID for me, performance gains (if any) are not worth taking trouble to backup up 80GB first( so i could format my old drive) and data insecurity also increases.

Thanx guys for u'r replies
Regards

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: phantom404

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Thing is that there are just as many sites that show otherwise. Anandtech being one of them.

Where do you see that? The only RAID0 benchmarks I can see on AT don't even include gaming performance.

I refer the right honourable gentleman to the following page:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2682&p=7

Also to the storage review thread on RAID0 is it worth it?

Sounds like RAID-0 did pretty good. That was from the link you provided. It doesnt say anything about games but it does give a performace boost otherways

No you're right, the link does'nt say anything about gaming performance, infact the following lines quoted from it aren't real!

Game Level Load Times

Our Game Level Loading Time tests include two of the latest games: Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Because of their high resolution textures and the large levels, the loading time for the levels of each game are long enough to help show a difference between each drive.

We have also included an older strategy game, Command & Conquer: Generals, because of its longer level load times as well. Though the game is a couple of years old, it still proves to be a good measure of data loading performance.

And more to the point these are not links to the graphs showing poorer load times for RAID0.
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/seag...%20160gb%2072009_01030680150/10465.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/seag...%20160gb%2072009_01030680150/10466.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/seag...%20160gb%2072009_01030680150/10467.png

Since the artifical benchmark shows an improvement unmatched by any real world test i think it's rather irrelevant.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
I refer the right honourable gentleman to the following page:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2682&p=7

Also to the storage review thread on RAID0 is it worth it?

I see they've gone and hidden the "Level Load Times" on the "Multitasking Performance" page with no reference to it in the index... That's pretty grim when the RAID0 loads HL2 levels 0.131 sec faster, and everything else slower.

That's interesting. I don't see any mention of a RAID controller, so maybe these benchmarks are showing that the on-board NVidia RAID0 sucks?

As was mentioned in the Maximum PC article (the article saying RAID0 was dumb), these level load times are actually very CPU-dependant. It's quite possible that a good RAID0 setup would improve load times a little, but the onboard RAID0 has more CPU utilization, and therefore actually slows things down.

Anyway, I don't think there's any question that RAID0 isn't worth it ... Well, of course there's a question. The question gets asked every day. But it's been demonstrated over and over that it's not worth it.

 

[phantom404]

No problem, glad we can help. Yea thats the only problem I see with Raid 0 is the failure chance. One drive goes bad there goes your system.

 

[Bobthelost]

Oh it is worth it for hardcore photoshoppers, but not really for gamers.