What made you decide to run raid on home pc?

[gizbug]

Never did RAID setup before on my home pc. What are the advantages to going RAID? I assume you can use different brands/sizes for your raid configuration....What are real world results and benefits with running RAID over AHCI?

 

[Zap]

Which flavor of RAID and what controller will you use?

Assuming RAID0 on the motherboard chipset...

PRO:
Faster sequential performance.
Bigger single partition volume.
Bragging rights.

CON:
Data loss (RAID is not a backup!).
Cost (not always, but sometimes you end up buying more drives than you would otherwise need, or a higher end motherboard).
Complexity (pretty easy these days, but still takes a few minutes extra work).

 

[_Rick_]

Back when I RAIDed two 80GB HDDs in RAId 0, the goal was to get better performance out of it. Back then HDD performance was just abysmal.
These days I recommend everyone to RAID-1 their disks, for the convenience it provides. I've simply had too many disks die on me or other people to continue believing that a single disk can be trusted with data. Backups on the other hand are cumbersome by design, so that's not an alternative, but rather an additional level of security, in case something below the disk level experiences a problem.
Finally, if you have a lot of data, RAID 5/6 are usually the best-scaling options cost wise. Mirroring 6 disks makes for 12, two RAID5s / a RAID 6 would be at 8 disks, which saves money, space, thermal headroom, noise and electricity.
These days RAID 0 has become somewhat obsolete, as even single SSD's are plenty fast, and RAM is dirt cheap (only about twice as much as an SLC SSD).
RAID 1 should be standard in every home computer, especially if you have trouble keeping your backup up to date. Disk failures can really ruin your day, and if you can simply resync instead of going through recovery, it's so much easier. Also sector read errors can be effectively rendered unproblematic.

 

[Nothinman]

Drive failures. I've had a few over the past few years so whenever possible I get 2 and mirror them with Linux software RAID.

 

[Blain]

The hassle of RAID configurations made me decide to abandon those options in my desktop PC.

Caveat...
I no longer use my PC for video encoding
My PC has no mission critical operations running on it

 

[exdeath]

I hate waiting on an electronic machine that supposedly can perform something like one trillion operations per second.

Tell that to the hourglasses and progress bars.

If I could do one trillion things per second, the last thing out of my mouth is going to be "Please wait..."

 

[Nothinman]

I hate waiting on an electronic machine that supposedly can perform something like one trillion operations per second.

Tell that to the hourglasses and progress bars.

If I could do one trillion things per second, the last thing out of my mouth is going to be "Please wait..."

Unless someone asked you to do 600 trillion operations....

 

[corkyg]

I use a 2 drive RAID1 array (hardware controller) for data only. I do it for the following reasons:

1. To be familiar with the process in order to assist clients.
2. To provide for some data redundancy. The array is duplicated on 3 other external drives in two other computers.

 

[Compman55]

In 2002-2003 I used RAID0 for two western digital 80GB's simply for more performance. Today I run software RAID 1 on my small server for drive redundancy.

I still do an offsite backup not as often, but often enough if the server melted down, my data would be acceptably current.

RAID 1 is a requirment in this chinese production society today. Failures are way too common.

RAID 0 is still awsome only on the intel raid chips. If you use 2 velociraptors, or a few SSD's you CAN indeed still get some big numbers. Its just not as common.

 

[Coup27]

I got another 128GB Samsung 830 FOC so I put them both in RAID0 just to see what it was like. Tbh I don't think there is a noticeable difference over one SSD and I lose TRIM. Most likely I'll go back to a single disk and use the SSD for something else.

 

[sequoia464]

I initially started using raid0 with a couple of Intel 40GB X25's mainly to extend the size of the drive.

Just sort of kept using raid 0 even as the capacities of my drives increased - currently using 2 Intel 80 gb X25's, 2 Kingston V+100's and a couple of M4's.

Other than with some Vertex 2's I have never had a problem - garbage collection seems to be doing it's job on all of the drives (especially the V+100's - I actually use them on a 6 hour backup schedule throughout the work day for the other two raided sets), I run AS-SSD and ATTO every few months just to check on them.

I agree with Coup in that, other than my backups, I don't really see any big difference in use from raided to non raided.

 

[Nohr]

I was originally looking for a single 256GB SSD. But I saw Newegg had Samsung 830 128GB SSDs for $85 so I grabbed a couple of those and threw them in RAID 0. I upgraded to Ivy Bridge/Z77 chipset recently so I don't lose TRIM support. It's my first time using RAID and it was kind of on impulse but I'm happy with it.

 

[Smoblikat]

In 2002-2003 I used RAID0 for two western digital 80GB's simply for more performance. Today I run software RAID 1 on my small server for drive redundancy.

I still do an offsite backup not as often, but often enough if the server melted down, my data would be acceptably current.

RAID 1 is a requirment in this chinese production society today. Failures are way too common.

RAID 0 is still awsome only on the intel raid chips. If you use 2 velociraptors, or a few SSD's you CAN indeed still get some big numbers. Its just not as common.

Im using 4 velociraptors

I started RAID0 because I had 50$ to spend on a new computer part and (at the time) another hard drive was a great option. It made everything noticably faster, but not to the point that I couldnt go back. Even on my quad RAID0 Velociraptors I could still easily go back to a single caviar black.

 

[kalrith]

I bought a 128GB m4 last year. I wanted more space, so I picked up another 128GB m4 for $75 from Buy.com. I'll run it as a separate disk for a while until I feel like reinstalling Windows. At that time, I'll set them up in RAID0.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I used to RAID-0 two HDDs in my desktop PC. Because SPEED.

I just use a single SSD because it's even faster, RAID-0 TRIM wasn't a thing when I set it up, and migrating a RAID volume when you swap motherboards is TEH FAIL.

I RAID-1 my home NAS because when I built it, storage was cheaper (pre-flood) and I had just had a couple of drive failures, so I wanted it to be at least a little redundant.