To do or not to do 6-raptor raid 0?

[BioTuned]

So i got 6 150gb WD Raptors, WD1500ADFD, the old kind. I've been thinking about doing a Raid 0 with all six? I already have two in Raid 0 for god knows how long, and I absolutely love it. What do you guys think?

[PhysX]

Sure why not ? They are just sitting there?

[Old Thrashbarg]

Don't ever even think about storing anything important on such an array. Any one of those drives goes bad, the entire array is screwed.

But if you're OK with that, then yeah, go for it. And post benches. :D

[Albaholic]

Don't ever even think about storing anything important on such an array. Any one of those drives goes bad, the entire array is screwed.

But if you're OK with that, then yeah, go for it. And post benches. :D
+1
I'd love to see how that performs

[Rattle]

unless you have a decent raid card i wouldnt really bother even with intel matrix raid.

[Endgame124]

unless you have a decent raid card i wouldnt really bother even with intel matrix raid.

Why Not? With Matrix Raid I'd take the first 4GB off of each raptor for Raid 0 and run the OS off of it and then Raid 10 the rest. My guess is the access time would be <6ms, probably closer to 5ms instead of 6.

Actually, if the ICH chipsets support dual reads from a mirror, it might even be better to run that arrary as a Raid 10 for the OS on a small slice and Raid 5 the rest for more space on the back end.

[BioTuned]

I won't be putting anything important in there, just OS, and if i decide to keep it, just games then. I keep all the important stuff on external drives, that have two more backups. Yea, i am that paranoid about losing my data. I'll be looking into raid cards, if intel's ICH10R can't handle them. Any suggestions on which raid card. Budget is limited

[Badbonji]

I would do it just for games and os, it doesn't take long to format the os and install some games onto a hard disk array if one takes a crap / corrupted. I have BSoD many times on my two 150Gb 16mb cache raptors, had no problems after. But know formatted since for RC1.

[MongGrel]

Sure why not, I actually just picked up a 5th one myself for grins and giggles, I have 4 in RAID0 on Matrix and they do about 260+ average transfers across the board in HDTune with 2000+ burst's.

I figured WTH, See if I can get both arrays running 300+

I use the RAID card and the 4 RE3's for storage and its independent of the system more or less in case of a raptor crash, do about 400 transfer rate with those 4, but slower seeks, so I thought I'd give 5 of em a try I guess :) I still need a better backup for the RE3's I guess, I save some things on my wifes system too, but they all are new and I'm hoping are as durable as has been mentioned several places and can come up with a more solid solution in the near future for backing those up.

I had to fill up that last Sata slot I guess hehe.

:beer:

And no I would not put anything your seriously worried about losing on them without a backup though, obviously your already aware of that yeah.

[fritzman]

Sounds like a great Raid0/Raid10 system in the making. Just remember, you'll have to create the Raid10 from the Matrix Manager in Windows (or at least you did when I did it about a year ago... not with Raptors though lol).

That's gonna be awesome.


Sure why not, I actually just picked up a 5th one myself for grins and giggles, I have 4 in RAID0 on Matrix and they do about 260+ average transfers across the board in HDTune with 2000+ burst's.

I figured WTH, See if I can get both arrays running 300+

I use the RAID card and the 4 RE3's for storage and its independent of the system more or less in case of a raptor crash, do about 400 transfer rate with those 4, but slower seeks.

Those speeds for your 4 Raptors don't sound right...

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=6112052&postcount=1847

[MongGrel]

Got me maybe its a bus thing, I had 3 running around 225 transfer, 4 run at 265 with the Raptors using HD Tune. That array runs on Matrix Raid.

Might be the newest one I stuck in but doubt it, I tested it initially on its own when I put it in here and was doing about 75 by itself. Diminishing returns and load on the SB maybe.

Things overall don't seem too bad with 8 HD's running I guess, have to see what the 9 do when I stick the other in here.

:eek:

Wish I'd bought a bigger RAID card when I got the 1210, I was trying hardware RAID out the first time when I got that one.

It pushes the 4 RE3's pretty well I guess, was hitting about 400 transfer with those on HD Tach, they've slowed to about 350 since I put the 4th Raptor in. Seemed odd to me a bit maybe overloading the bus a little.

That and I'm running a Q9650 and a X48 and not an I7 :)

:beer:

[MongGrel]

Why Not? With Matrix Raid I'd take the first 4GB off of each raptor for Raid 0 and run the OS off of it and then Raid 10 the rest. My guess is the access time would be <6ms, probably closer to 5ms instead of 6.

Actually, if the ICH chipsets support dual reads from a mirror, it might even be better to run that arrary as a Raid 10 for the OS on a small slice and Raid 5 the rest for more space on the back end.

Are you sure on the supporting dual reads on mirrors? I might have to give it a try it out once I get to testing again next week, I posted something about setting up a RAID 10 about a week ago and no one replied to it while I was on vacation :)

Sounds interesting, can you do RAID 10 with an uneven number (5) in Matrix ?

:beer:

I'll try a few things out on my own anyways, when I finalize this setup are the last HD's I'm buying for awhile. That or the wife aggro going to get bad hehe.

Might try some of that OCZ LV ram out in the future though :)

That and maybe a C-Form Antec 850 PSU possibly, probably not while this one working, and all I plan on doing this thing for a long time to come.

*edit* oh my bad on the IF there, I think I misread going through this a bit fast last night here and there. Sorry :)

[fritzman]

Raid10 = even number of drives, so 5 is a no-go. What was the R10 questions?

[BioTuned]

I will be putting this together, some time next week or so. Once I have it setup, I'll run some benchmarks, and see how it performs. I'll post up some pictures and results. I am not sure about RAID 10 though. I might just keep everything on RAID 0.

[MongGrel]

I think my main one was whether RAID 10 could be done with 5 HD's in Matrix basically, I didn't think so.

Any after that are kinda moot I guess.

Thanks much :)


:beer:

[Endgame124]

What was the R10 questions?

Do the ICHxR chipsets support parallel reads from a raid 10 array. If so, does it support parrallel reads from Raid 10, Raid 0+1, or both?

[fritzman]

Do the ICHxR chipsets support parallel reads from a raid 10 array. If so, does it support parrallel reads from Raid 10, Raid 0+1, or both?

i have absolutely no idea... I'm running R10 on my main machine... is there a way of telling?

Here's a link to the ICH10R datasheet if that helps, but a quick look at occurances of the word parallel didn't help me. http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/319973.pdf

[Endgame124]

i have absolutely no idea... I'm running R10 on my main machine... is there a way of telling?

Here's a link to the ICH10R datasheet if that helps, but a quick look at occurances of the word parallel didn't help me. http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/319973.pdf

Thats a good question. Some basic google searches return lots of hits on RAID 10 DB performance, but I have no idea how to test to see if you're pulling data off of both sets of mirrored disks at the same time.

[fritzman]

Would it be as simple (not that it is especially simple, because it would blow away my Raid0 part) to disconnect the mirrorred pair of drives and bench that pair alone, and then compare that to the normal 4 x drive setup?

[BioTuned]

Unfortunately, I got some bad news, Intels matrix couldn't perform as expected with 6-raptor raid 0 setup. I kept getting errors when i tried to bench em with HDTUNE. however i was able to get couple of benchies with SiSoftware Sandra 2009.

Results are attached.

[fritzman]

That looks odd... I ran 6xdrive for a short time a while back, but always sliced off a small chunk rather than doing the whole of each drive... worked fine back then