Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Well.. it is slightly faster at installing software, loading files and so on but it has the disadvantage of if one hard drive breaks down you loose it all.
You also need a floppy drive to load the drivers for Raid.
I have a Raid0 array and I'm very happy with it. on my XP 64 bit OS :)
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Hi, I currently have setup you're proposing (2 x 640 wds) in RAID 0. I noticed a big speed increase in certain specific tasks such as muxing/demuxing a video file, or copying etc. but typically on large files. There was a slight increase in speed loading certain games - again though this would be more obvious on games with bigger maps for example.
For day-to-day tasks, though it's hard to justify (unless you do a lot of the above of course), RAID 0 can even be slower if working with a lot of small files, so on reflection I don't think it's worth the extra for the infrequent benefits I get from it, but I guess if you're keen to try it out then you'll do it anyway out of curiosity - like I did :rolleyes:
If you decide to go ahead, make sure you're prepared to do regular backups as you're effectively twice as likely to loose all your data through drive failure.
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
As the posts above it depends on what you are doing with your PC personaly i only ever use raid 1 but it suits my useage
A good link on raid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
It purely depends on your usage - home user, certainly not.
I do use RAID0, but a lot of the work I do benefits from the increased IO from the disk.
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
On the flipside, I sadly used Raid0 in my system I built about 5 years ago. It died 4 weeks ago and I lost everything. I knew the risks, but I was one of those people who just said 'It won't happen to me' so I never backed anything up. Lost about 6 years worth of photos which made me pretty sad :(
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
The same could have happened with a single disk - without a backup procedure in place, it makes no difference if its one drive in a RAID0 array thats died, or a single one.
I stick to two small drives, this way I can take a complete image of its contents with Acronis under well under 10 mins. Currently my RAID0 array is 320gig, with several 500GB drives for backup and other stuff :)
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Yeah but if the chances of a single disk failing is 10%, then the chances of a single disk in a 2 disk array failing is 20% so you have doubled your failure rate, of course the chance of both of them failing is only 1% (but that is where Raid 1 comes in).
Of course you should still always back up, in fact having 2 backups makes a lot of sense.
Oh and obviously my failure percentages are complete farce, I admit it I made them up :o
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Well speaking from personal experience, ive got two computers with RAID 0 arrays and when I made the change I noticed a difference in boot and load times and also large file transfers, if your content with the risks then i would say go for it. Just make sure to keep a backup of important files, but then I would say that about just one drive too :S.
Hawker
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
I've used RAID 0 for years tbh and it's definitely useful to me. All I do is backup everything, incrementally, with Acronis TI to a third drive once a week (or so) for peace of mind (i just set it to turn off once done leave it to it). That way I can have a history of backups (TI compresses using all four cores very well) in case of software failure as well as hardware failure. Drive space is cheap, so why not?
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Webby
Yeah but if the chances of a single disk failing is 10%, then the chances of a single disk in a 2 disk array failing is 20% so you have doubled your failure rate, of course the chance of both of them failing is only 1% (but that is where Raid 1 comes in).
Of course you should still always back up, in fact having 2 backups makes a lot of sense.
Oh and obviously my failure percentages are complete farce, I admit it I made them up :o
Compared with a single disk RAID 0 does have twice the chance of failing.
Compared with two disks RAID 0 has exactly the same reliability, but you need to restore up to twice as much from backup when a disk does fail.
Hard drives in general are very unreliable and you'll almost certainly have one fail on you within the next ten years so you should definitely make backups.
I think RAID 0 is worth considering is cases where two half capacity disks are the same cost as a large capacity disk, e.g. 2x500GB instead of 1x1TB are worth looking at, but if you're happy with your current capacity I wouldn't spend more money unless you need the extra transfer speed.
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Technogeek
You also need a floppy drive to load the drivers for Raid.
No you dont. It depends on what motherboard and OS you are using.
I RAID 0 2 x 500GB Samsung Spinpoints and have a third drive to back up to once a month.
Never had an issue and it is certainly nippier than when i used a single drive. (Especially loading games up)
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Blitzen
No you dont. It depends on what motherboard and OS you are using.
Choices are (for Windows):
XP:
- too stupid understand CDs, hard drives or USB keys so..
1. integrate the drivers into your XP CD with nlite
2. use a floppy disk
Vista:
- use vlite, a usb key, a cd, a dvd or another partition to give it the drivers *IF* it doesn't already see your RAID.
Just anothe reason to abandon XP :mrgreen:
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EndlessWaves
Compared with a single disk RAID 0 does have twice the chance of failing.
Compared with two disks RAID 0 has exactly the same reliability, but you need to restore up to twice as much from backup when a disk does fail.
Hard drives in general are very unreliable and you'll almost certainly have one fail on you within the next ten years so you should definitely make backups.
I think RAID 0 is worth considering is cases where two half capacity disks are the same cost as a large capacity disk, e.g. 2x500GB instead of 1x1TB are worth looking at, but if you're happy with your current capacity I wouldn't spend more money unless you need the extra transfer speed.
Yes if you have 2 drives then the chances of one of them failing are the same as one drive in a raid 0 array failing, the problem is if 1 disk fails in a 2 single disk set up you loose the data on that single disk if one disk in a raid 0 fails you loose the data on both disks. So from a single disk verses raid 0 set up (which may as well be a single disk in terms of data lose) you are twice as likely to have the raid 0 fail as the single disk. With proper back ups this is not an issue, apart from the time required to sort it all out if it goes pear shaped.
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Raid 0 is a lot more then double the risk of data loss IMO
There are plenty of ways to recover data from a multitude of different types of drive failures, the chances any of those will work at all to your benefit when the drive is part of a raid, is slim to zero.
Re: Raid-0 it is worth it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dangel
Just anothe reason to abandon XP :mrgreen:
Wow, despite liking Vista, I also used to like XP, and have never heard of compelling reasons to "abondon" XP before reading your post.
Oh, and I wouldn't call DX10 a "reason" to upgrade to Vista - it's more like a forcing of the hand. (I regret that it's not patched into XP.)