Real RAID5 on the desktop?

[obeseotron]

Am I the only one who thinks this is long overdue. Now a lot of chipsets are beginning to support raid5, but only in software which makes for very high cpu utilization and write speeds sometimes not even 1/3 as fast as a single drive. The other option is a $400 card. Both of these seem inadequate to me. In a time of quad-SLI, it doesn't seem all that outlandish a feature. This needn't be a super high end or expensive feature - a lot of people out there could afford 3 250GB drives for under $300, which would give you half a terabyte of redundant storage in RAID5. This doesn't even need to be an enthusiast only feature, most normal people who use their PCs for 5 years before upgrading actually have more issues with failing hard drives than people like us who feel oppressed by hardware more than a year old.

It would require silicon space and it would require engineering resources, but I don't see why it would be out of the question of nVidia or Intel to do it and put it on their more expesnive chipsets, maybe as a supplementary chip. Any thoughts?

 

[Matthias99]

It would require silicon space and it would require engineering resources, but I don't see why it would be out of the question of nVidia or Intel to do it and put it on their more expesnive chipsets, maybe as a supplementary chip. Any thoughts?

RAID5 is really just not something that most people need on their desktop. It doesn't replace backups; it's really an uptime feature, and the VAST majority of people aren't going to want to sacrifice a third or a fourth of their drive space (assuming they even HAVE 3 or 4 hard drives in their system) so that they can stay running through a drive failure.

On the desktop, any sort of RAID is already an 'enthusiast' feature. Adding hardware RAID5 support to the chipset (an extra controller, additional XOR processor, maybe some dedicated RAM, etc.) would definitely add cost, so you wouldn't want to do it for the entire product line. Just hanging a RAID5 controller off the PCIe bus is possible -- but you don't need to change the chipset to do that, just put the chips and extra ports on the motherboard.

I could see building it into server chipsets, maybe, but it would have to be VERY robust for it to be able to replace existing add-in RAID controllers. And if you need a lot of drives attached, you'd probably need extra controllers anyway.

 

[Luckyboy1]

Actually, the truth is 0 RAID arrays have become so reliable... even the Western Digital Raptors which had some bearing trouble at first... so reliable as to make other configurations of extremely diminishing returns.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I believe the only reason the horror stories about harddrive dying make the issue sound so real because you're far more likely to come to a forum such as this and complain about it, bash the company that you got a bad HDD from. While in the mean time the vast majority of us that have no problems with our multiple hard drives have nothing to say about the issue other than our HDs work, not that exciting.

I already have two 250GB HDs in RAID0, if I had a 3rd it would also be with those other two in a 3 way RAID0 setup. If I had a 4th I might consider two separate RAID0 setups if not have all 4 drives in RAID0.

I backup my important data to DVD or an external device such as flash memory or an external HD, I don't really have a fear of losing a drive because I make sure I get them with at least a 3 year warranty (usually I like going for Seagate's 5 year but I'm upgrading to new HDDs usually before 3 years are up anyways). If one of them fails, yes it would be annoying restoring the files and what not but it really wouldn't be that big of a deal to me.

RAID5 and some of the other more elaborate (moreso and RAID0 or 1) just don't make much sense for the average user.

 

[RaiderJ]

I prefer to have RAID 5 on a separate card, that way you can transport the entire array if need be to another system with a PCI (or whatever) slot.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
I prefer to have RAID 5 on a separate card, that way you can transport the entire array if need be to another system with a PCI (or whatever) slot.

Conversely, the card dies, you can't find a new one of the exact same model, and the data is gone forever.

If you don't have a large collection of movies, music, and other media, RAID 1 is totally fine. However, once you get much past 400gb or so, you'd be a fool to not start considering software RAID 5.

-Erwos

 

[AMCRambler]

With the size of hard drives available cheaply nowadays, I think Raid will definitely remain an enthusiast only feature for the desktops. Your average user would have trouble filling a 300gb hard disk. I think maybe you'll see raid make it to the XPS or Alienware systems(if it's not there already) but raid 5 which just adds a hot spare, I don't think will every become common. I think flash memory based hard drives will be the next evolution for primary disk storage.

 

[BDawg]

The only RAID you should ever see on the desktop is 1.

Exception: 0 for scratch space

 

[imported_Tick]

Yeah, RAID 5 requires very complicated controller hardware, so it's a specialty thing. It would be way to expensive to include on mobo. However, I do love my hardware RAID 5 card. *hugs computer*

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
I prefer to have RAID 5 on a separate card, that way you can transport the entire array if need be to another system with a PCI (or whatever) slot.

Conversely, the card dies, you can't find a new one of the exact same model, and the data is gone forever.

I just wanted to point out that with most external RAID cards, usually any controller made by the same company (or at least in the same product line) can access the array. And assuming the company hasn't gone out of business, they should have software utilities that can rebuild RAID images into 'non-RAID' images (although these are not always publicly available). A lot of data recovery software also knows how to deal with drives/images that are from any of the name-brand RAID controllers.

In any case, you're in the same boat if you use onboard RAID. What if your MB craps out a few years down the road and you can't find an identical replacement or one that uses the exact same chipset and RAID software?

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
I prefer to have RAID 5 on a separate card, that way you can transport the entire array if need be to another system with a PCI (or whatever) slot.

Conversely, the card dies, you can't find a new one of the exact same model, and the data is gone forever.

I just wanted to point out that with most external RAID cards, usually any controller made by the same company (or at least in the same product line) can access the array. And assuming the company hasn't gone out of business, they should have software utilities that can rebuild RAID images into 'non-RAID' images (although these are not always publicly available). A lot of data recovery software also knows how to deal with drives/images that are from any of the name-brand RAID controllers.

In any case, you're in the same boat if you use onboard RAID. What if your MB craps out a few years down the road and you can't find an identical replacement or one that uses the exact same chipset and RAID software?

Linux software RAID, AFAIK, has never lost backwards or forwards compatibility. Don't blame me for using an inferior solution 🙂. Once you're not using real hardware cards, there's no reason to even bother with the on-board stuff.

You list a whole lot of "maybes", too many for my taste.

-Erwos

 

[RebateMonger]

RAID 1 or 5 isn't the answer to preventing data loss. The answer is making periodic backups. And keeping some of those backups UNATTACHED to the computer.

Once a backup system is in place, if you can justify a RAID solution based upon uptime concerns, then, by all means, go ahead. But you still need backups.

All of my clients have RAID 1 or RAID 5 systems. But I'd NEVER, EVER consider them safe without current backups. I've run into all kinds of problems that having a RAID array didn't help with. Like user error. Like viruses. Like theft of their entire computer.

On top of that, these Anadtech Forums are littered with people who didn't completely understand how their RAID controller worked, or had motherboard failure, and ended up losing all their "protected" RAID data.

 

[obeseotron]

I was never suggesting that a feature like this would be moved up market to servers and workstations where the cost of an extra controller card isn't really a big deal. And obviously anything short of an off-site backup is not safe enough for most businesses. My feeling was more that they could give us something on the desktop, something on those $200 motherboards, that would be better than what we have now. Much of the cost of those high end RAID boards is related to them being a low volume special product, usually only bought by businesses. The cost is mostly artificial and could be brought way down if it were more sold. At the very least put enough silicon there so we can get usuable write speeds, even if it takes a bunch of cpu to achieve. With dual core today and probably a lot more tomorrow, one core being tied up managing the array wouldn't be nearly as big a deal as with a single core.