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View Full Version : 2x150GB Raptors in RAID 1, Move to RAID 5?

Maverick0984
10-03-07, 11:41 AM
I bought 2x150GB Raptors a few months back and put them in RAID1 cause I didn't feel the RAID0 performance gain was worth the risk.

Using HDTune I get around 80MB/sec, on average, on my P5K Premium w/ ICH9R. Burst rate was 112.1MB/s. Access time was also about 9.1 ms :-/. Performance also decreases as the test is run.

I'm wondering if adding a 3rd and obviously reinstalling and making it RAID 5 will produce a sizeable increase in performance?

Obviously all the XOR instructions will be done by the CPU but I wouldn't think it should bother it too much since I'm running a Q6600.

They can be had for $185 from newegg or $170 after MIR which I don't mind at all.

Any thoughts?

(Intangibles: 300GB of space vs. 150GB of space)
CGR
10-03-07, 01:10 PM
You should see some performance increase over a mirror. How much I cannot say as I have never really compared both in a real world environment.

I can say that Raid 5 on a non server machine may take more cpu power than you would like.
aja
10-03-07, 01:15 PM
I thought you need at least 4 drives for RAID 5?
Joeteck
10-03-07, 01:20 PM
I thought you need at least 4 drives for RAID 5?

Nope, 3 or more drives for RAID 5.

For a RAID 5 setup I would use a hardware RAID controller....

Alot of error checking going on, that if you don't have one, the CPU will be doing all of the work.

If you have a 8x PCI-e slot available, this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131003)one is nice.
Maverick0984
10-03-07, 01:24 PM
I would think my CPU could more than handle it though?
aja
10-03-07, 01:37 PM
I would never do anything more than RAID 0 or 1 on an onboard controller. Get a RAID card!
Joeteck
10-03-07, 02:10 PM
I would think my CPU could more than handle it though?


Whats the purpose for the system?
Maverick0984
10-03-07, 06:06 PM
Whats the purpose for the system?

It's just a personal computer.

I was going to buy an 8 port 3ware card to build a data storage RAID 5 off of but I was going to wait a bit for that since it's like $500+ just for the card.
JCLW
10-03-07, 06:19 PM
If you have the $ buy two more and run RAID 10.
Maverick0984
10-03-07, 06:22 PM
If you have the $ buy two more and run RAID 10.

I really only wanted to get 1 more hdd for the main partition and was planning on having multiple 750gb disks in RAID 5 off of a 3ware card slowly building it. This function would be solely data storage, so RAID 5 is fine.

I can start that off with 3, and then add more whenever I see fit w/o having to start over correct?