Raid - is it worth it?

[starbuck]

Building a new rig and want my hard drives to run as fast as possible.

This means that I have the choice between a raptor, a cheetah drive or raid.

Now, I know that a cheetah is sh*t fast as it runs at 15k and the raptor runs at 10k. I also know that they are about as loud as a fighter jet engine.

So what I'm looking for is speed but also as quiet as possible. This I think leaves me with the option of a raid array. Was thinking of setting up a raid 0 array with 2 samsung spinpoint 500gb drives as I've heard they're fast and quiet.

Solid state drives are too expensive at the moment(and write time ain't great) so question is, is raid that much faster than a single drive? Is it worth the higher risk of data loss?

btw, will windows see a 1TB(ish) of space with a raid array or just 500gb?

[Blitzen]

Use 2 normal drives in RAID 0.

Yes!!! Its worth it.

[Zak33]

Raptor

not raid.

I promise.

unless raid with raptors.

[Blitzen]

Raptor

not raid.

I promise.

unless raid with raptors.

2 Normal RAID 0 drives are faster than a single Raptor <----End of.

[Agent]

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=91668

Worth a read

RAID0 is well worth it if you need the speed.
Keep in mind that one disk dying = all data gone, but as you already know this, you should have backup plans in place.

[Agent]

Raptor

not raid.

I promise.

unless raid with raptors.

It depends on what its going to be used for

To be honest, we need to know what kinda things you do on the system. Gaming, encoding....ect

[Lucio]

Personally I'd never trust RAID 0, I've seen my g.f having to reinstall her PC far too many times!

Now, RAID 1, there's a different story!

[starbuck]

It depends on what its going to be used for

To be honest, we need to know what kinda things you do on the system. Gaming, encoding....ect

All of the above, will be used for gaming, video encoding, music processing and general usage.

[Agent]

Personally I'd never trust RAID 0, I've seen my g.f having to reinstall her PC far too many times!

Now, RAID 1, there's a different story!

What does reinstalling windows have to do with RAID?

[BUFF]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...tanding_raid/6

[Agent]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...tanding_raid/6

Not aimed at you Buff () - but thats a crappy article. No benchmarks, all POV, nothing to back up what's been said....[Could have gone to wikipedia for the same info]

I dont know what id do without RAID0 and dual core video encoding. The added speed makes a difference for me.

[Agent]

All of the above, will be used for gaming, video encoding, music processing and general usage.

I do a lot of video encoding too, and IMO RAID0 makes a huge difference. As encoding is pretty IO heavy on the disk, doing other things while its busy can grind the system to a halt.

Best bet is to try it and see mate

[Fabula]

Get three drives and do raid 5.

[Zak33]

2 Normal RAID 0 drives are faster than a single Raptor <----End of.

nope...

2 Seagate Barracuda 80 gig drives in RAID.....
vs
1 Raptor 74 gig

Raptor boots faster, loads games faster, swaps files faster.

the only thing it doesnt do faster is synthetic tests, like HD Tacho. In that, RAID rocks.

But in real life, it didn't...not for me. Thats why i tried it.

However.....for FRAPS recording RAID was amazing, as per Agents comments on video editing.

Agent does like it alot I just....didn't

[Funkstar]

RAID-5 will take a huge performance hit, especially in write performance. Even on a lot of proper hardware cards.

[Lucio]

What does reinstalling windows have to do with RAID?

Cos it the array kept dying! 6 failures in 12 months across 3 computers.

It's enough to put any one off!