To RAID or Not

[CrimsnTide]

I started messing around with home video and transferring to DVD. I?m also looking into networking my TiVo to obtain some different material and fooling around with that. With this comes the need for space to work. I?m ?happy? with my system now which is a dual 2.4 Xeon system, sitting on a SuperMicro P4DCE+ board, (yes, it?s a i860, 603 pin chipset) maxed out with 2 GB of RDRAM. I have two SCSI drives (10K?s) running on a Adaptec 29160 board. Although it?s a couple (few?) years old, I?m still satisfied with its performance. I work a lot with CAD programs and still will continue to do so. I have just acquired some new hard rives and would like some opinions on setting these up. The NEW hard drives are:

(3) Seagate ST336756LW 36GB 15K U320
(1) Seagate ST336732LW 36GB 15K U320
(1) Seagate St3146807LW 146GB 10K U320

I also have a Dell PERC4/SC (MegaRAID 320-1) controller coming. My question is whether to RAID these drives or go with just a basic U320 SCSI controller. My first thought is to put two of these 36GB drives together in a RAID 0. With that I wouldn?t be paranoid on what goes on there. Maybe even three 36GB drives and put my OS up front, dumping my B.S. apps and other things on the 10K drive?.I?ve also thought about a RAID 5 with the 3 36GB drives and still keeping one for my OS. From what I have read, keeping your OS on a separate drive is the thing to do. Is there something I should be considering here? I have never worked/installed a RAID before. There are NO concerns on the box or PS. I took care of that on my first build. Any input is greatly appreciated! Please, no bashing on how this upgrade is going. I have my reasons for starting out this way.

 

[Terumo]

Just RAID 0 the 15ks. If you had another 15k I'd do a RAID 50 (and wonder how fast that thing would blow through the bus). lololol

Unless you're doing more reads than writes, don't do a RAID 5 for A/V. It'll be chugging to write to disk.

 

[CrimsnTide]

A neighbor of mine who thinks he is the computer "GOD" thinks a RAID is a waste of time and money - especially using SCSI .... But he did come back and say that maybe I should have considered a dual channel or at leaset get a U320 controller for just my OS? Is he correct? I thought the 320-1 controller would be a sufficient piece of hardware... Anyone????

 

[fstime]

Raid the 15ks as stated above, leave the others.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well, does that Motherboard support PCI-X? Im thinking you could sell those 2 RAID controllers and use that money to buy 1 more 15K RPM SCSI drive and a PCI-X SCSI RAID Card. THe performance gains would be very tangible and your data would be much safer due to the fault tolerence of the RAID 5.

If you dont wanna go for that i would Stripe the 15K RPM's and leave the 10K for misc. files.

-Kevin

 

[Markfw]

Keep the Dell PERC4/SC (MegaRAID 320-1), as I have the predessor, and it rocks on U160 ! And I say go raid0, then copy the finished product to a large (slow) ise drive as backup, or even burn a DVD of them. 5 10k in raid0 gets my <1 ms average access and 200k read/write. 15k drives on U320 would blow that right out of the water. Go for it !!! (only the 4 15k drives as stated.)

And just put everything on the 4 raided drives,a dn use the large IDE for backup of important files. Since it is not a dual channel controller, you wouldn;t want to slow it down with the other 10k drive.

 

[Terumo]

Originally posted by: CrimsnTide
A neighbor of mine who thinks he is the computer "GOD" thinks a RAID is a waste of time and money - especially using SCSI .... But he did come back and say that maybe I should have considered a dual channel or at leaset get a U320 controller for just my OS? Is he correct? I thought the 320-1 controller would be a sufficient piece of hardware... Anyone????

True RAID has it's purpose for fault tolerance and speed (RAID 0 and 1 aren't true RAID). Most folks don't need it and elect to forego the hassle of setting one up -- that's fine. But if you truly want to make your 15ks work as intended, either RAID 0 it, or if your 15k are U320s, get a controller for a 320, otherwise it'll be crippling the drives (making them work with half thoroughput). U320 is where 15k drives belong.

Best speeds and less headaches also come with matching the drive to make and model (no mixing of brands or models or different capacities). It's like in the old days of the P3 dual processors. A matched pair was less likely to misbehave. JBOD setup will work, but don't expect stellar performance.

 

[SunSamurai]

What do you mean RAID 1 isnt true raid? Thats ridiculous.

 

[Terumo]

Originally posted by: aeternitas
What do you mean RAID 1 isnt true raid? Thats ridiculous.

It's basically copying one drive to another, without the benefits of other RAID levels (like hotswapping -- which is the common setup of desktops).

 

[Markfw]

Redundant (data copied to both) array (as in 2) od Independant (2 individual disks) drives. Raid 1 qualifies even by your standard, but raid0 is raid, just not the redundant part.