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Got a single 120Gb Maxtor SATA Drive as my main os/apps drive atm, split into 2 partitions, one with the os on and one with games/storage etc on it
What kinda performance increase will get I get if I swap the single Maxtor for a pair of 80Gb WD Caviar's (WD800JD), there newer drives and are meant to be quieter but how are they performance wise on there own and in a pair?
nO ONE?
If the drives are of similar performace and your RAID controller is good, the RAID 0 setup should give you a decent bump in speed.
Its all theoretical though, as many different factors can effect RAID performance, the controller being one of the biggest.
Not an awful lot of performance increase. Programs load a bit faster, but not twice as fast. Will make nary a hoot of difference to frame rates in games.
However, and it's a big however, a striped RAID0 array is very susceptible to crashing on it's bottom over minor file errors and taking your precious data with it...
TBH, I don't think RAID0 is worthwhile. RAID1 for security, RAID5 for security and speed, but otherwise I'd just stick to not-Raid.
Raid probably isnt worth it tbh. if youre buyng new then for the price of 2 80GB you should be able to get something like a diamond max 10/WD2500KS which will give you both more storage and high performance.
I wouldn’t go as far as "very susceptible". Its more risky yes - but have a look at the MTBF of your drives and work it out off that.Quote:
Originally Posted by schmunk
RAID0 entirely depends on the kind of work your doing.
If its just general DTP / Gaming / Web system, there isnt a huge point. Games will load a bit quicker. Ones that utilise large file packages (such as UT2004) will be most noticeable. But let me stress the difference isnt huge.
However, if your doing Video encoding / Rendering / Large scale Photoshop work / Messing with large files (such as DVD images) a lot, then you will notice a big gain. With these sorts of applications, the performance is much closer to being doubled than in the above scenarios. This is only due to the fact that these applications are limited by the hard-disk in the first place. Generally a game is not.
You have the increased risk - yes, but this fact alone [imo] is not a good reason not to go with RAID 0 if it will benefit your system. As the problem with the method is known, it can be counted with the use of regular backups, or another drive for copies of critical data. If you have the money, RAID 5 is another good solution.
Ive had a couple of 80gig Seagate’s running in RAID0 for about 3 years. Solid drives and never had a problem. If they were to die tomorrow - no biggie, everything important is backed up :)
If you let us know what your system is used for, it makes it a lot easier if to recommend it or not :)
Well it gets used to convert divx's, surf the new watch films and play BF2.
As it stands I have the 120gb as my C and D, C with apps on, D with games/general storage.
Then I have a T drive which is an 80gb sata drive that gets use as my temp/swapfile drive, I was thinking of pairing this with another 80gb and having an array and then using the 120gb as the temp drive.
All the films/media etc are on a networked drive.
Then it probably won't make much difference. Video convertion to/from a network drive will be most limited by your network and CPU speed. If you do much transfering of such files within your own computer you'd notice a difference.
I run RAID 0 and have done for about 2 years now, no problems whatsoever. Bought an external drive for backups but i'd still be doing that anyway with a single drive. Yes there is a slighty increased risk but frankly i find it a darn site faster than a single drive in most of the stuff i do (games included) and at the end of the day your drive is always your biggest bottleneck.. Incidentally I also use RAID 0 at work too, where my data is far more critical. The key to drive stability (RAID or not) is keeping them adequately cooled - a strategically placed fan makes all the difference (are you listening DELL?!?!).
Raid is very cheap now thanks to cheap SATA drives and it's inclusion on many motherboards. Perhaps the best way with such things is to try it for yourself and see if you'd go back. I rather like that it takes under 10mins to install windows from scratch personally... ;)
If either disk dies, you lose EVERYTHING. So, in effect, you are actually running at twice the risk. A significant increase IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by dangel
And as they are striped, it vastly increases the difficulty involved in recovering anything, and the likelihood that files will be unrecoverable...Quote:
Originally Posted by shaithis
Have to say that's a bit of a strange statement. Bottleneck when you are reading and writing large amounts of data for sure, but that nearly always takes place in a situation in which other components are not relying on hdd speed for their own performance. As mentioned, it won't make games or in general any programs run any faster as they are bottlenecked by things other than the drive. HDD speed tends to come in when you load data at the start of a program, then no more (if you have enough ram). Exceptions are when you are moving large volume of files locally.Quote:
Originally Posted by dangel
Windows start up is not always quicker with raid 0 either - due to the necessity of loading up the raid drivers and initialising the system.
I ran RAID0 on 20GB of my 300G HDDs (4x300, 80GB), the speed of the array is LARGELY depends on how fragment is the drive. Since I put lots of random write onto the RAID array it gets slow very easily. For STR I can easily push over 220MB/s but thats all about it. File extraction takes as long, file copying to another drive is still the same speed.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
Only problem was, with my setup (Disk1,2,3,4), If I try to copy from Array1 to Disk4, it is damn slow, vice versa. So I ended up going back to single disks.
IMO, if you're used to single disk, go to RAID0 will give you a decent speed (compared to before). If you're used to working with multiple disks. You won't like RAID0 them.
I would have tried RAID0 my 300G HDDs but 1200GB is A LOT to backup thats why I didn't do it.
Well due to some instaltion difficulty I ran a single 160GB for a couple of weeks, I then re-did the system and out in my RAID 0. The difference despite what you may read is noticeable, I can move files and access programs waaay faster than I could before. My computer generally feels faster. I would highly recommend it.
Did you try running the system with 2 disks running seperately? Obviously 2 disks are going to be faster han 1, RAID or no RAIDQuote:
Originally Posted by RavenNight
Any if, in single disk system, the disk dies?Quote:
Originally Posted by shaithis
Bottleneck = slowest thing in the system. Care to name something slower?Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
That's all i meant ;)
Startup is usually faster, at least for me, especially if you're loading a lot of apps on startup (as most of us do). The RAID overhead isn't noticable on either of my RAID-ed machines ;)
Honestly, RAID 0 is fine with backups - but i wouldn't use a single drive without backing it up either. If you really worried about data loss that much and want RAID then (as mentioned) go with striping AND redundancy. Personally, I find a weekly backup to a USB drive quiet sufficient for my personal data.. Drives are so cheap now it wasn't an issue for me personally or commercially.
Well i ran raid0 on my ibm deathstars for 2 years and the performance was improved and i had no problems with reliability.
BUT
the big problem with RAID0 using onboard chip is
what do you do when you change ur mobo?
A BIG disadvantage is that you cant just pull the drives out and plug them into another mobo... .. well unles it has the same sata controller chip with same firmware version...
so not only do you lose everything if a drive dies, but if your mobo goes then things get tricky too...
The user ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by dangel
lol maybe in your case dear.. :mrgreen:Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
Yeah that's fair comment. I don't think you need the exact same firmware version for the RAID controller tho - I've updated my BIOS (and also my RAID BIOS) without changing anything else. A newer firmware version should be (check!) backwardly compatible. When I switch MB recently, i move from a SiL RAID to an nVidia one - all i did was copy everything to an external drive and rebuild the array. Interestingly, the nVidia RAID has more drive space than the SiL gave me ;) SiL and nVidia RAID controllers are very common so _perhaps_ there's a bit more portability thesedays.Quote:
Originally Posted by funnelhead
Well my boards an AN8-Ultra with an x2/3800+ at the mo so I cant see me changing the board or chip anytime soon so theres no issues with swappin the board etc...
I admit that the bottleneck is my hands :( Couldn't type a keyboard accurately, I could blame my keyboard but switching to another keyboard didn't help.Quote:
Originally Posted by dangel
Adding another 2001FP helped a bit but I still feel that I need more desktop space...
But of course, with my 12 HDDs I have no problem multi-tasking. No slow-down.
I wish I got a faster broadband to match.
List of bottlenecks:
1. My hands
2. My crappy 2Mbps ADSL connection
3. The crappy NF4 LAN which eats up 85% CPU on both sides at 620Mbps/s with no JF.
4. My 3000+ in my 7x24 rig which multitask so slow :(