RAID Questions

[Dawgdoc]

Hello everyone.

I have some questions regarding RAID setups, both general and specific.

General Stuff:

My understanding of RAID, is that you are using 2 or more physical drives, which make up 1 logical drive thereby improving performance. In other words, there are more than 2 physical drives which the computer sees as 1 big drive.

Correct so far?

I am told that this improves performance. How so? How and why does it?

To the best of my understanding, there is RAID 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. What is the difference between these 6 setups?

Is setting up a RAID format on a computer an easy thing? It is more of a hardware setup or a software setup?

Is it better to use multiple smaller drives or larger drives or does size not matter? I ask because a respected/knowledgable board member mentioned to me in another thread to use a 500gb HD in RAID configuration, and that didnt make sense to me. My limited understanding of RAID setups was that using smaller, faster drives improved performance at least in part because there was less space on each drive to access to get information, but 500gb is a large drive. Is this assumption not correct?

More specific questions.

I am putting together a new gaming comptuer (as many of you regulars im sure realize as I have been posting like 15 times a day for the past week gathering info LOL).

So far, I have:
Q6600 SLACR (on order-will arrive next week!!!)
P5K Premium Black Pearl (will order today)
TR Ultra 120-Extreme with Scythe-s fan (will order today)
Patriot extreme performance PC9200 2X 1gb sticks (will order today)
EVGA 8800 GTX 768 (have allready)
Samsung 226BW Analog (have allready)

BTW......Is the patriot memory overkill at PC9200? Should I just stick with 800 Mhz memory or will I get some advantage with the faster memory speed that I have listed above?

Still deciding on case/psu/drives which is where this post comes in.....

What drives would work well in this setup? This will mostly be a computer for online gaming, but also I am getting more and more into computers and this will be my first serious OC attempt. From my research thus far, it seems as Seagate 76gb 7200 RPM would be good choices to put in a raid format? I was thinking of getting 2 or 3 of those for a RAID setup, and 1 x 300gb for general storage. Does this sound ok? Are there better choices?

Do I need to get drives faster than 7200 RPM for improved performance or is that not necessary? Sound is definitely an issue. I want to make this system as quiet as possible, but am willing to sacrifice SOME noise for improved performance.

Any additional information regarding RAID setups, or other articles which discuss RAID in more detail for a beginner to learn would be appreciated.

Thanks again!

[Dawgdoc]

Hmmm thought of another question before I purchase.....I still need to research the drives a bit more i think...

I know the difference between PATA and SATA (if I didnt I think I should be rethinking starting to purchase the hardware yet LOL)...

But....what is SCSI? For the P5K premium mobo I am purchasing I am fairly certain I want SATA 3.0 drives correct?

Thanks :)

[Dawgdoc]

Sorry for the string of posts but......

Im currently looking at this drive here, and was thinking of getting 3 of them to use them in RAID 0 format which would give me a performance boost? A bit bigger than what I mentioned above, and with 3 of those I dont think I would need another storage drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148155

Any red flags here with the system I described above?

[CGR]

Did you read the sticky at the top of the Storage section for RAID info?


SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface. Its a different type of interface that in the past dominated in speed. Now a days while the SCSI 320U drives are still the fastest the gap is closing between SCSI and SATA.

SCSI drives generally are higher RPM drives. A lot of them are 15k whereas the fastest SATA is 10k being the Raptor.

SCSI is also considered to be more reliable for a longer period of time due to the standards under which they are manufactured, but Im sure some people would say otherwise.

For database operations SCSI is almost exclusively used in live environments.

[Dawgdoc]

Did you read the sticky at the top of the Storage section for RAID info?

I glanced at it, but since it was written in 2002 I didnt think it likely contained any good recent information.

[CGR]

There really hasnt been much change in the way RAID works. Though in the last few years more raid types have been added, such as 10, 50 and a couple others.

[Drew@PSU]

You really should read the RAID sticky, but I will answer some qs of yours since I'm a little inebriated. :beer:

RAID 0 - Stripes data over two or more drives to increase performance
RAID 1 - Mirrors data over two or more drives ( even numbers ) to increase reliability
RAID 5 - Stripes data over at least 3 drives to increase reliability by using a parity bit

These are pretty much all most people use. RAID 6, RAID 4, RAID XYZ are all different versions of these, for the most part. Please read the sticky for more indepth info as to how exactly they work, I can barely type at the moment....

Stick with SATA, SCSI is overkill/unsupported
If you want the utmost performance, 2/3 Raptors in RAID 0, use Intel Matrix RAID for this and split it into RAID 0 for OS/Boot, RAID 1 for storage.
However, if you want quiet over performance, grab some Seagate 400/500GB perps ( perpendicular recording ) for RAID. Raptors are loud. The choice is yours.
The size of drives is of limited importance for the amount of performance you gain/lose. While Random Seek times increase with larger drives, you get that much more space. If you want to sacrifice seek time for space, don't do the matrix raid thing and go full on RAID 0. Otherwise, use matrix raid and "make" smaller drives. Read the RAID sticky and you will know...:D

Hope that answers some questions,
Drew