Raid / no Raid

[Cruxton]

Hi,

2x Raptors 74 gb = 2x 150$ = 300$

10k Raptor 74gig

That's a little pricy if you ask me.

Is the performance gain really worth it?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

What do you do with your computer? Is this going to be your only hard drive setup in the system? For most systems, there will be little to no improvement in a desktop or gaming system. See this thread, as well as the post that Roguestar copies & pastes into every one of these threads (for good reason, for there are a lot of these threads).

I have a single 74gb Raptor for boot, 2 150gb Raptors in RAID 0, and 5 400gb hds in RAID 5. I would NEVER suggest someone running RAID 0 as there only drive setup, because of the risks involved. Even with a good backup strategy, it is still a pain in the ass.

Unless you are doing video editing, rendering, or otherwise moving large amounts of large files, you won't notice a difference. Get single, large hard drives and it will be just as fast.

My benchmarks:
74 gb Raptor
2 x 150gb Raptor (RAID 0)
4 x 400gb RE2 (RAID 5)

Benchmarks are quite different than real world performance however, and much harder to compare.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I don't have the hard facts about Raptor SATA-150 versus newer SATA "2" or -300 drives in front of me -- not all the facts, anyway.

But consider this: The SUSTAINED throughput for a Raptor is about 72 MB/s -- by itself.

The sustained throughput for a Seagate "perpendicular" 7200.10 SATA2 drive is about 68 MB/s.

I have currently three RAID0 (2 drives each) arrays here at home in our networked systems. None of them has given me any trouble. One of them was put together in January, 2003, and the other two were created in summer, 2004. We keep them defragged and maintained; there has never been any trouble with them, and they've been running near continuously. But we recognize that there's no salvaging a RAID0 array if you lose just one hard disk.

To that end, our first RAID5 array was created on an older server machine to accept scheduled, automated backups of persistent and volatile data files. It's a three-drive array using an Highpoint PCI controller. Considering that we mostly access it through our gigabit network, it is amply fast, too.

Our latest RAID5 is on my workstation here, with four SATA2 Seagate 7200.10 drives (mentioned earlier). The buffered read benchmark is around 500 MB/sec. The linear read tests range from 120 MB/s to 220 MB/s, with random read tests showing 190 MB/s.

I'm using the 3Ware 9250SE 4-port PCI-E controller, which mysteriously outperforms an x8 Areca model though it's only x4. It has about 256 MB of DDR 533 memory buffer.

I had to pay for this performance -- about $320 for the controller, and about $80 each for the four drives -- with a fifth drive kept in storage in the event of failure.

These Seagates are 320 GB each, so the combined storage is 0.75 x 4 x 320, or around 9/10 of a terabyte.

I like it.

 

[jdkick]

If time is $$$ and you're working with a substantial amount of data the yes, the performance could very well be worth it. It depends on your focus.

I did a little bit of testing at work with standard SATA drives on an ICH8R. I know, it's a pretty simple setup compared to those above but I was looking at it from the perspective of standard desktop use. In that scenario, I noted nothing terribly significant - only milds gains/losses with RAID0/RAID1. I haven't got around to the HighPoint controllers I have under my desk.

I'm contemplating a RAID1 data volume for my next PC build. It wouldn't replace my backup routines, but it would give an added measure as I do work with digital images and there is also a fair amount of work that's still in flux and hasn't been captured in a backup.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

That sounds reasonable. Except for the 3-drive RAID5 server, I would still be configuring in two- or three-drive RAID0. The biggest expense for me was the controller. The additional drives were an "incremental" addition to cost.

But, like Hyman Roth (based on Meyer Lansky prototype) says in "Godfather II" -- "Dis . . . is da bidnis . . . we're in . . . . "

Call it "enthusiast extremism."

 

[SerpentRoyal]

What's the average file size accessed by most users? 5-10MB. It would take about 0.2 second for a modern 7200rpm drive to handle this chunk of data. The continuous read/write speed of the best 7200rpm drive is higher than a Raptor. Therefore, a good 7200rpm drive is still better for large file transfer.

RAID 0 provides a small real-world increase in read/write speed with a higher risk of loss of data. KISS. Avoid RAID. Give windows its own primary active C partition. This will allow you to quicky image and defrag the OS. Remember that most software issues are caused by the OS. That's why it's very important to image the OS before any hardware and/or software change.

http://www.tomshardware.com/20...with_a_bang/page9.html