Raid 0, 0+1 or Raid 5 Raptor Query

Am currently gathering a few bits'n'pieces to upgrade my system for when my stacker 830 arrives and I rebuild into that.

I currently use one 74Gb raptor as a boot drive and recently bought a pair of 74Gb Raptor drives now I cannot decide whether to use all 3 drives and Raid 5 or alternatively I have the opportunity to buy one more Raptor of a mate so would also have the option to have a 4 drive Raid 0 arrary or 0+1.

I could just sell my exra drive and use the pair in Raid 0, I'm not sure if its worth having that kind of setup (4 drive array) just for my home pc I have plenty of storage drives so the array ould just be for XP Pro only.

Anyone got any experience of raid and is it worth the extra expense to have 4 drives and also which Raid level to opt for various articles lead me to believe that the performance increase wih 4 drives is not worth it others rate it as making a significant difference, all opinions welcomed case and new cpu probably won't arrive to mid week so would be looking to build next weekend.

Cheers.

You say it's just a home PC, but what is your typical usage of the computer? - that'll help us determine the best solution :)

Good point, its mainly used for web browsing, Bittorrent, dvd ripping some video encoding, basic word/excel usage, and at the moment work have told me to learn Filemaker and Access so am spending time using those as well but also want to have a play with Photoshop and Indesign software too, I don't use it for any gaming at all Current spec is as below:-

Intel 3.2 940 @ 3.9Ghz (arrived this morning)
Asus P5WD2 Premium
2x 1Gb Geil DDR2 667
X850 XT PE
1x 74Gb Raptor
2x IBM/Hitachi 500Gb drives
1x Seagate 400Gb
1x Seagate 200Gb
1x Seagate 80Gb

Hope that helps,

Cheers

I woudn't Raid 0+1 as to me thats wasting 2 drives. I would say if you've got 3 drives go for Raid 5, but does your mobo support it or are you getting a controller card?

Yep the mobo supports Raid 0, 1, 5 & 10 so gives a fair amount of flexability, I was initially thinking Raid 5 but mate only wants £50 for his Raptor so am sorely tempted but at the same time reliability is something I've got to consider its such a major pain when things don't work or are unstable I don't want any hassle with the rig but on the flip side I do want a moderately fast machine.

Cheers

I know that on a Raid 5 array you can still work with no problems if one drive fails. I'm not sure if that is true of a Raid 0+1 array though - you may have to replace the faulty drive and rebuild the array across the 4th drive before you can carry on, but I'm not sure on this.

Nope I think your correct as on the one occasion that a drive failed in Raid 5 in the Nas units at work, users were still able to access the information whilst it rebuilt to the replaced drive, with 0+1 I've always assumed that the system is down until the array has been rebuilt and verified.

I hadn't actually thought about the downtime aspect for my machine, I suppose in that respect Raid 5 does have a definate advantage. I just hope that Stacker case is all its hyped up to be as there are going to be a lot of hard drives crammed in there regardless of which Raid option I go for.

Cheers

I would also recommend raid 5 as the continious uptime would be an advantage without the reduction in capacity that a raid 1 solution entails.

As for your mates Raptor - I'd buy it at that price (and I'm looking for a raptor at the moment too :( :p) but have you thought about having it just as another disk, for example using it for your windows swap file?

Lol if I don't take it off him I'll ask if he'd be prepared to sell normally for £50, would it not be a bit extreme to have a raptor just for my swap file, I'm not sure of the benefits of having it on a seperate drive, does it increase performance significantly?

I have plently of storage otherwise (8-Bay storage tower + 3 sxternal caddies)

Cheers

You can do RAID0 on 3 drives :)
I'm amazed how do you need a X850XTPE if you don't game.

RAID 5 all the way :)

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Originally Posted by arthurleung

You can do RAID0 on 3 drives :)

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You can and there are machines here at work that are configured as RAID0 for performance reasons. However, those machines actually store their data on the servers; RAID0 setups are a HIGHLY inadvisable place to store data.

Hmmm............ I think I'm just going to go the Raid 5 route, I know it doesn't happen that often but I just couldn't face having to reinstall everything in the event of drive failure, plus I have the drives already.

Though I still like the idea of 4 x 74 GB Raptors in Raid 0 I'm just not brave enough to run my main pc configured that way.

Oh the X850 and most of my system came free/greatly reduced in price thanks to the nice people at Dell :) otherwise I certainly would never have bought such a gfx card for myself.

Thanks for the assist people, much appreciated.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kameio

Hmmm............ I think I'm just going to go the Raid 5 route, I know it doesn't happen that often but I just couldn't face having to reinstall everything in the event of drive failure, plus I have the drives already.

Though I still like the idea of 4 x 74 GB Raptors in Raid 0 I'm just not brave enough to run my main pc configured that way.

Oh the X850 and most of my system came free/greatly reduced in price thanks to the nice people at Dell :) otherwise I certainly would never have bought such a gfx card for myself.

Thanks for the assist people, much appreciated.

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I would not advice running RAID5 off raptors, because the speed reduction will be so huge that you will be better off selling ALL 3 raptors then buy may be 4x300GB SATA300 drives for RAID5 and get the same performance and 6 times more space. It just defeat the purpose of having the raptors. Unless you have like 8 raptors, but 3 in RAID5 is not going to make much performance advantage over more 7200rpm drives.

I think I'll have to have a play with various Raid configs next weekend, as I don't really have a need for more storage space as I have an 8-Bay storage tower and 3 external 250Gb caddies in addition to what's in the main pc but I would like a bit of a performance boost from my main OS drive/s.

Cheers