Safe to Defrag a RAID? Need advice...

[Scorpion]

I was just wondering if any of you have had experience defragging your RAID set ups.

I have the Promise Fasttrack66 controller. I have 4 IBM ATA66 drives connected to it. I'm running Win2k. I've had this setup since January, but haven't defragged. It's about 50% full and I keep a lot of backup and stuff on it.

I was just wondering how safe it is to defrag this. I've read things in the past about people getting coruptions or losing data. I dont want any of that to happen. I would like to know how safe this is.

Thanks in advance.

edit:I'm running them in RAID 0. 54GB of total space.

 

[Gatsby]

It better be safe to defrag with a Promise Raid Setup..

I;ve been done it three times in the last month and my machine is fine

Gatsby

 

[RSI]

Check if there is a special program to defrag it with?

I'm guessing it would be fine, but you never know.

-RSI

 

[eelw]

Been running WIN2K with software RAID0 and been defragmenting for about 6 months with Symantec Speed Disk without any problems.

 

[Mday]

using promise raid here, using speed disk also, no problems... a bit faster though, BUT my partitions are larger

you haven't defragged since JANUARY... that setup should be messed up... er.. I mean it should take a while for that array to be defragged (one partition at a time).

here is to hoping you were not stupid enough to make ONE partition out of that array. because it will take forever, and then some.

good luck bud. chug a beer while you wait for that activity light to stop blinking (and not stay on, which meant it crashed). of course if you are like me and don't drink, use another computer and surf until your finger is numb (from scrolling).

 

[Mday]

"RAID 0. 54 GB"

almost thought i saw 0.54 GB

 

[Scorpion]

LoL @ Mday.

Thanks for the input guys. I wanted to hear some real world testiments.

I think it's safe for me to do it.

Yes, all 54GB are on 1 partition. It probably will take a while. But it's not completely full... so it shouldn't be too bad.

I'll just chug a beer or something I guess.
And then I'll play Diablo 2 on my other computer.

 

[pdo]

For you guys running a RAID-0 setup. Could you please post some bench score using Sandra. I just got it up and running and I don't think I'm getting the most out of it.

 

[zogg]

I thought that the bandwidth is limited when you use more then 2 drives in raid 0 on a promise ide setup. Supposedly udma 66 will become saturated when you increase to 4 drives because the pci bus cant handle all the bandwidth to reach the level of saturation or some thing like that. From what I understand a raid setup in scsi will handle the bandwidth of 4 drives or more in raid 0.
I think I saw a graph that actually showed the performance go dowwn with four drives as opposed to two drives in an ide raid 0.
But I could be wrong, just thought I saw that somewhere.

 

[zogg]

^