Raid - is it worth it?

[Nemeliza]

I have 2 WD Raptors in RAID-0

Is it worth it?, err...yeah seeing as it didnt cost me much.

It's been fine for me, never had to reinstall windows. Not that it would be a problem, a fresh install takes ~12mins

[this_is_gav]

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

For transfer rates, yes, but for everyday use, not even slightly.

2 Raptors in RAID0 however, and you get the best of both worlds.

[Thorsson]

You mean a big hole in your pocket and concorde on/under your desk?

[Zak33]

My Tagan PSU is noiser than my Raptor.

And as it's summer...so are the 5 case fans!

[dangel]

I've run RAID 0 for years without issue - and yes I do see tangible performance gains in daily use. The best thing to do is try it yourself and see if it works for you. Statistically it's more likely to die (2 drives = more probability of failure) but it doesn't worry me in the slightest: the gain is worth it.
As has been said software RAID 0 isn't really that bad either - cpu load is very small in RAID 0 as compared to, say, RAID 5! I don't even notice it, i'm sure most won't either.

As with any storage system, backups are mandatory - all i did was drop a third drive in there (500gb 7200.9) which I powerup when needed (SATA is hot swappable) via a powerswitch on the front of my PC and backup _everything_ to (well, why not?).

Drives are cheap, you prolly got software RAID for free on your motherboard - so why not?

[DataMatrix]

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.

I hate when people use this sort of philosophy, "if one drive dies all data is lost" same goes for one hard-drive. STOP USING THAT ARGUMENT AGAINST RAID.

RAID is your friend.

[DataMatrix]

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

ROFL! You can't compare an old tech 80GB 7200 RPM drive vs a new tech 74GB 10000 RPM.

Try 2 Seagate 7200.10 in RAID 0.

Install Windows, Install Diskeeper, and you have yourself an array which runs very smooth.

[Agent]

I hate when people use this sort of philosophy, "if one drive dies all data is lost" same goes for one hard-drive. STOP USING THAT ARGUMENT AGAINST RAID.

RAID is your friend.

HAY GUYS LOOK WHAT WAS WROTE IN THE THREAD I LINKED

When you know RAID 0 offers no redundancy, you would be mad to store important data on there with no backup.

A question that always springs to mind when people talk about RAID 0 arrays dieing, is how many people actually have data backed up of their main, single HD ?

[Thorsson]

Raptor versus RAID0 is a non-argument. For what you pay for the Raptor 150Gb, you can buy two 500Gb disks and still have a fistful of change. Or get one of the new 750Gb, 32Mb cache drives for the same money.

OK to buy a Raptor if that's all the storage you need or if you have money to burn.

[GSte]

I hate when people use this sort of philosophy, "if one drive dies all data is lost" same goes for one hard-drive. STOP USING THAT ARGUMENT AGAINST RAID.

RAID is your friend.

It is true that it is statistically more likely to fail though, as has been said numerous times in this post already. That is a perfectly valid argument, but you are correct though in that any data you're worried about losing should be backed up whether you have RAID or a single HDD.

[Dreaming]

I use raid a bit because I can't afford expensive drives. They are the inferior option without doubt. I bought two fastish small drives (WD1600YS) for my operating system and am going to upgrade my hitachis to some sort of 400gb drives for raid1 in storage. Although I don't really need the storage, it's more just for the size aspect. Currently I have
224 + 383gb free on two arrays lol. It is fast but I don't know how much faster than a single drive. Most noticable when you're transferring say 40gb from one hard to another (so long as both are raid0 or the drive you're pulling data off is raid0 or 1).

I couldn't buy a raptor because they're so expensive.

[finnrogers]

From my own experience, RAID 0 has been very beneficial. I use 2 x 160Gb Maxtor DiamondMax10 drives after upgrading from using just 1 x 250Gb Maxtor DiamondMax9 and found the performance gain to be very good (despite the hassle of having to install a floppy drive just to install the RAID driver during the XP install (please don't tell me of better ways of doing this now... I know them!)) - I back up important stuff onto my xbox which now hosts the old 250Gb Maxtor drive.

The differences I particularly noticed were file transfers (copying large Divx films from one folder to another for example) and load times in games and apps. At LANs I noticed a big difference in pulling large files off the network too.

[aidanjt]

It is true that it is statistically more likely to fail though, as has been said numerous times in this post already. That is a perfectly valid argument, but you are correct though in that any data you're worried about losing should be backed up whether you have RAID or a single HDD.

As I've said before, bad hardware comes in batches. It's not as simple as RAID0 == array_death_risk * 2. One disk by itself has pretty much the same probability of barfing chunks as 1 disk in a RAID0 array if the came off the same batch.

[peterb]

It is true that it is statistically more likely to fail though, as has been said numerous times in this post already. That is a perfectly valid argument, but you are correct though in that any data you're worried about losing should be backed up whether you have RAID or a single HDD.

Assuming you have two identical drives (different manaufactur batch!) and each drive has a MTBF of 500,000 hours. Assuming too that the initial failures (the start of the 'bath tub' curve) have been filtered out by the mfr burn-in process, then with one drive, you are likely to get a failure some time in the next 500,000 hours. Add two drives to an array (RAID 0) and the chances are you will have two failures in the next 500,000 hours, or one failure in 250,000 hours. In other words you halved the MTBF and doubled the risk of losing all your data. Now it might be the reduction of risk from a small number to a another small number - but it is still a factor that you need to consider. Certainly for RAID 0 I would want to use enterprise grade drives to ensure the MTBF is as high as possible.

[dangel]

Holy thread revival batman!

[iranu]

Having used raid 0 and now using two seperate drives (both using the same hard drives) I've decided that I'm gonna do a rebuild/reinstall and go back to raid 0. Why? Well game loading times are now longer and this annoys me. The statistical increase in failure is a bit of a moot point. Doesn't matter whether you have two disks running raid or running seperately, if one fails then you need to buy a a new hard drive. If it's the drive with the OS on then you'll need to rebuild anyway. The statistical increase in failure is for the array/OS not the hard drives.

Any data that you cannot live without should be backed up on removable media regardless of what you go with. With modern removable hard drives then this is so much easier.