to RAID or not to Raid....that is the question

[VideoQuasar]

I'm getting pretty excited here, almost giddy! Waiting for my A64 3000+ "chester" to arrive.

So I'm building an OVERCLOCKER.....I caught the bug.

Should I set up Win XP Pro on a RAID 0 array with my Hitachi SATA HD's? I have noticed all articals and tests seem to use single IDE for their OS hard drive. Please help explain if there is a problem and of course all ideas and tips are very welcome good fellows. Here's my build I'm setting up......

MSI K8N Neo2 Platnium
3000 winchester on the way (FX chip is down the road some, need to do some tinkering before I abuse it)
Therm. XP-90 hs with Panaflow 92mm
TwinX 1024-4400C25
2 Hitachi 250gb Deskstars
eVGA 6800 GT (pulling from other rig, also have a Artic NV Silencer 5 coming with my cpu order)
550w PurePower PSU

All this is going to be in my Lian Li PC-V1000 I just recieved.

Should I set up in RAID 0????

Thanks again

VQ

 

[Jojo1971]

raid-o is only good if you have a 3rd hdd for backup..remember when youre using raid-o, your chance of harddrive failure is doubled.

 

[VideoQuasar]

Thanks Jojo....I understand the striping theory and 2 will be 1. I am wondering if I will have less overclocking limits set because I'm Raid 0 configured.

 

[imported_Twitch]

If you plan on 'regular' desktop usage (perhaps that the comp would be for personal use vs. professional video editing on a job), then any possible benefits you might have from using Raid 0 will be minimized (and/or near zero). Your overclocking would probably be just as limited with or without Raid, though. If one disk in a Raid 0 setup dies, you lose everything.

If you wanted to go for a faster setup (while still being at least somewhat safe), you could use one drive for apps/OS which is super fast, say a 74GB Raptor, and have your 250GB Hitachi drives as Data drives. This way, if your OS dies for some reason, your info is nice and safe. Now you could use a SCSI harddrive instead of the Raptor for an OS/apps disk, but they would be even more expensive (also need a controller card), and unless you are dealing with multiple threads (unlikely in a single user environment), your Raptor would be a better bet.

 

[CheesePoofs]

I don't think you'll have more OCing limits, but there is no use doing it because it will give you no real speed boost.

 

[VideoQuasar]

Thanks again....great info. Now will SATA be DMA enabled if they are independent thru the onboard controllers?

I do mess around with video editing. So would that benefit me with the OS on RAID 0?

 

[Rock Hydra]

I built a system for someone using the computer as a file server. I ran it Raid 0 then Mirrored the array to RAID 1 and I was disappointed in the performance as the gain was only ~1-2%. The only advantage was that he wanted only one volume and using 2 200 GB drives was cheaper than a Single 400 at the time.

 

[tracerbullet]

I'd also recommend against RAID for your setup. I have set RAID 0 on one of my PC's and I am glad I did, for my uses it is noticeably faster. I don't overclock that machine though. (I'm toying with a 2nd one, is why I've been reading this forum a lot lately).

O/C'ing not only affects the CPU, but the RAM, and possibly any and all other items affected by FSB (Front side bus) speed. If you haven't set things up right you may accidentally push the speed of the PCI and other items on the motherboard oo far and they won't work. It won't necessarily wreck anything or physically ruin a hard drive... but may very well put an end to your RAID stripe, which can be a fragile thing.

I guess my thougths are - you're not only doubling the chances of a problem by having 2 drives, but you are tripling / quadrupling / whatever your chances, by pushing everything that keeps them up and running together in RAID. Lose that, you may lose everything on them.

 

[Duvie]

Listen...I have done the research thorughly...Reviews will show no big gains. However I did the research where I asked many of the users and it appears some of the gains are in things that many dont seem to test. I have heard of big gains in map loading in certain games. I have heard of snappiness on the desktop as well...

The main thing ofcourse is the danger of loss of data. If you have a backup. I plan on raid arraying 2 36.7gb raptors and then ghosting the setup on a pratitioned section of my main drive. I am a backup fanatic with my CAD files and movie files so I fear no data loss anyways....

 

[SunSamurai]

This message brought to you by the good folks at Dairy Farms! "Milk so freash, the cow doesnt even know its missing"


Everyone that has RAID0 setup in their machine and is seeing no improvement nee to stop fscking telling everyone RAID0 is not worth it.

There are more than the combination of hard drives and controllers in this world than what YOU are useing. Not to mention 100 other things could be bottlenecking your systems RAID. So stfu before you even start.

 

[bradley]

It seems, suddenly, the popular thing for many people on computer forums is to soundly denounce RAID. I notice these criticisms often come from those using cheap RAID controllers, with no practical application for using RAID, who have also experienced major data corruption, at least once. You know what they say about once bitten, twice shy.

Again, I'd ONLY use RAID 0 if you have a real need for it; in other words: you work consistently with really huge files... and it's also necessary to be the type who religiously backs up his/her important data -- every few days. Otherwise, if you fit both of those criteria, I say, go for it.

 

[VideoQuasar]

Youv'e been great guys. Thanks

Bradley or anyone.....Do you consider the onboard controllers such as those on the Neo2 to be quality RAID controllers?

 

[Jeff7181]

Understand that what RAID 0 does is increase transfer rates. It also slightly increases access time... by how much depends on the quality of your controller.
You mentioned maps in games loading quicker. I have my doubts about that since maps aren't really that big. Most any hard drive you can buy today can load the map and the textures into RAM in just a few seconds provided it's not fragmented to hell.

BF1942 probably took the longest to load maps for me, and when I bought my Raptor I noticed a big difference in load times. People also say the game Vampire - The Masquarade Bloodlines loads areas extremely slow... some taking 2-3 minutes... I've never had one take over 45 seconds to load, and most take 15 or 20 seconds. CS:S maps load in about 10-15 seconds.

So it's my opinion that it's not transfer rates that effect things like this, it's seek times, which RAID 0 doesn't help with at all.

But hey, if you want to do it, go for it... don't let anyone here decide for you.

 

[darkeyed]

I use a raid 0 on my design system where I load and save 40 to 50 meg files all day. For this aplication it performes much faster. But for normal loading of everyday files and programs it does not seem to be much faster. On the system I am building now I am planning on using a raptor for my system drive and a 7200 rpm sata for a storage drive. But this system will not be doing CAD design work just my personal system.

 

[VideoQuasar]

Will the Raid 0 put a cap on how much I can overclock?

 

[Necrolezbeast]

I agree, in most situations I can't tell the difference in my RAID-0 system than I could before. Where it does shoe a great performance increase is in loading maps in games. Map loading was probably the main reason I even decided to try the RAID system out and I have been happy ever since. If anyone here ever plays Warcraft 3, specifically the custom map DotA, you would know that it takes forever to load the map and doesn't prompt most users to "press any key". Out of all my friends I am the only one who sees that prompt, and it shows on my screen for about 10 seconds then times out.
I would only recommend the RAID-0 setup if you find a good deal on the hard drives, or would like the extra performance for the certain tasks it is good for. For me, I obtained 2x 160gb Seagate SATA drives for $50 each without rebates, and I do have a 160gb and 80gb both WD SE's for backup.
Edit: RAID-0 had no effect on my overclock, XP-m 2500+ @ 2.4ghz.

 

[Duvie]

stripe size is important but I have heard many say it helps the seek time....How much I dont really know and it may all be quite subjective, but thetheory of Raid 0 says it would...

 

[HermosaBeach]

I have a RAID 0 setup and its blazingly fast as compared to my single IDE computer. Both computers have the same operating system, motherboard, CPU and memory.

Common components of both computers: Asus A7N8X Delxue, AMD 2800+, 1 GB RAM (2x512MB), Windows XP Pro + SP2 + all the latest updates.

RAID 0 configuration: 5 Seagate 15K RPM, U160 SCSI hard drives, with crappy PCI based Mylex controller

Single IDE configuration: 1 80GB IDE Western Digital 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache.

The RAID 0 computer boots much faster, loads games and maps much faster and loads large programs much faster.

Once things are loaded into memory, such as after a large map is loaded, they both run the same.

Dave Kliewer

 

[VideoQuasar]

You guy's really got me thinking. What if I pull a Maxtor 9 120gb from my old build and put it on my IDE and use something like Norton Ghost to make backups. If something was to happen, I could just boot off the IDE right?

 

[Duvie]

Or just rebuild the Raid back faster.....

 

[VideoQuasar]

I don't want to run RAID 1 Duvie. I guess I should just run RAID 0 and see if the array fails when I overclock the snot out of the little 3000 chester. hmmm

Can always reinstall windows I guess if it goes kaput. Hope everything is good and locked on this Neo2.

Thanks you guys, you all were very helpful.

VQ

 

[Duvie]

No it is Raid 0 with the ghost of that on other drive or a partitioned section of that 120gb...It is still Raid 0....

 

[tracerbullet]

My setup is a pair of Raptor's on the SATA channels of my motherboard striped for speed, for a total of about 70GB (give or take) of space. I've got a 200GB drive on one of the IDE channels that I use for general file storage. It's also got a Norton Ghost image of the RAID setup.

If anything ever goes down, backup is simple: Replace a SATA drive / motherboard / parts as needed. Get into the RAID BIOS and recreate the stripe. Boot from the Norton Ghost CD. Copy over the Ghost image (takes about 30 minutes) from the IDE drive onto the RAID stripe. Go find something else to do for about an hour. Reboot. All is back to normal.

Couldn't be easier. I make a new Ghost about once a month, roughly as often as I change something in the system that I'm leary of (new hardware, or like making a backup right before I put on SP2). I've only had to restore it once, on account of a dead motherboard. Replaced it with the exact same board, and was up and running just like old times in a couple hours, including the time spent installing it into the case and attaching all the wires, etc.

And sheesh, anyone that says RAID isn't fast clearly hasn't experienced things like loading Windows onto a brand new PC, and seeing the time between F8 "I accept the EULA" through exiting out of the virtual tour take approximately a 10 minute time span grand total. Windows boots measureably quicker, same for ripping and encoding DVD's, you name it. Won't catch me going back to a single IDE drive if I have anything to say about it. Other PC's feel like dogs in comparison.

Actually, if you're willing to have a single (well, a non RAID) large drive to use as a backup, and get a copy of Ghost or something similar, then I'd have to change my mind on my previous answer to "yes, go for the RAID setup". If you're OC'ing the CPU you're OK with working to make the PC as fast as possible. Why stop there, go for the hard drive speed and everything else you can think of. Get that one big drive and a good backup program (that you know how to use!!!), and in the chance a stripe breaks you won't have too much work to get back up and running.

 

[SunSamurai]

"And sheesh, anyone that says RAID isn't fast clearly hasn't _experienced_..."

Couldent of said it better.

 

[VideoQuasar]

cool tracerB......thanks for the input and advice. Now for a surprise and I'm not joking. I have 4 Hitachi SATA's, 2 from my old system, and I made sure to get the other 2 as exact models. Would I be able to create a TERAbyte of RAID 0 on my Neo2? Since it has 4 SATA connections. I'm thinking I could partition the array real nice, like having the OS on the outside stripe. If so, should I back down from a standard 32k stripe or jack it up?

I'm stripping down my other computer tonight for my 6800gt and capture card. If anyone may wonder, I have a PC Power and Cooling 510 Deluxe in FedEx happening right now. I wooried about power so I went for it. I really really appreciate your guys input, believe me!!