Raid guide for beginners

i've been working on this for the last few weeks on and off

Download:http://www.alsenior.me.uk/files/raid...idguide1.2.zip

i'd love some feedback if i have missed anything or there is anything that need changing or modifying.

Go crazy:rockon2:

Alsenior - downloaded- Thanks . Don't use raid ATM but this will maybe motivate me . :)

Cheers mate, I'll give this a go, see what I can grasp from it :)

Not bad Alsenior. I personally would always like to refer to the benefits of one type of raid over another type with full practical examples.

For example my data base works better with raid 5 for data and raid 1 for logs because.... etc

But definitely a great starting point.

TiG

Thanks i didn't really understand Raid before but thats helped a lot, i think il give it a go when i can afford to upgrade my HDDs

Your definition of Intel matrix raid is somewhat different from my understanding.

Quote:

---

Intel matrix raid is a combined raid 1 and raid 0 on 2 disks. It works
by splitting the disk into 2 parts and having one pair of parts as a
raid0 and the other pair raid1.

---

Seems strangely different to Intels own explanation Intel® Matrix Storage Technology

Most users use raid0 & raid5 for the 2nd volume.

Valid point there i'll stick on the things to update list. the reason why i put this is that to me matrix raid loses it's point on more that 2 drives because you may aswell have the whole load as raid 5 as the storage gain is minimal by using matrix raid and spitting the drives. having a different point of view helps here. thanks for pointing that out

Yep but matrix raid & the ability to run a fast raid0 + a secure raid on the 2nd volume is a big plus for many. It provides a flexiblr & cheap solution, without the cost of addon cards.

The interest shown in bing's thread
Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives serves to show the interest.

Thank you alsenior. Will give it a read, usually dont use much RAID, but always interested in such things.

Thanks, have read that and realised that the way I have things set up at the moment is wrong!

Update posted with the ideas from supershanks and TiG

Hi alsenior, ive just read through the raid guide, good stuff, but i've corrected some spelling/punctuation stuff because im anal like that, and added headers etc, just tidied it up basically, have a read through - oh and ive suggested that you explain about parity/crc data in the RAID5 array, ie say how its generated, and thus how data can be 'salvaged' if a drive in the array dies :)

anyhow, its available here

hey, in your guide there is a lot of mention of losing data if drives fail, does running in raid make it more likely that one of your drives will fail or are you simply pointing out that that is what would happen if one was to fail?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Airlemental

hey, in your guide there is a lot of mention of losing data if drives fail, does running in raid make it more likely that one of your drives will fail or are you simply pointing out that that is what would happen if one was to fail?

---

Drives are no more likely to fail when in a RAID array than when not, and due to the idea of redundancy present in RAID (well, excluding RAID0), the idea is that you can cope if one of your drives fails :)

new release with (most if not all) streetsters corrections and place holder coming in a few minutes

Edit: uploaded

I want to read this but the site is down for me atm :< will check tomorrow.

On a slight related note... I don't suppose anyone would happen to know if HP server hard drives would work in a normal desktop SCSI controller?

Cheers

hp server drives would work you would just need the appropriate converters

just posting a update.

Things that have changed

• Diagrams
• Added info about raid 6
• Added info about JBOD
• Now available on scribd for viewing without download

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4605303/Th...-for-beginners

That looks like a pretty nice guide there.

Id love to give setting up RAID a go but at the moment I just don't have the time or patience

Its good - couple of typos to be removed. You haven't mentioned RAID 6. I think ythe biggest drawback of RAID 1 isn't that the chance of dual drive failure is still quite high (it is no higher than that of single drive failure, and having two drives - from different batches - is lower than single drive failure) is that of "false sense of security" and of course all hardware RAIOD controllers still have a single point of failure - the controller. This is negated if one or more elements of the array is iSCSI - although that is not something that would really apply in a home environment.

I'm not sure about the therotical speeds in RAID 0 - I have a feeling that write performance can be worse.

There are other softwarte RAID implementations - such as mdadm.

Finally it might be worth emphasising that RAID is really about resiliance and uptime, and is not a substitute for a backup regime! (Puts hobby horse away :) )

But great concise guide! (and I am aware that it is much easier to criticise - I hope constructively - someone elses work than to write your own!)

awsome! thanks for posting this. Been thinking about playing around wiht RAID and this is gonna help :)