Is RAID 0 worth it

I have a Asus P4T533 motherboard with a Promise RAID controller on board. After reading this post I have decided to stick with my original idea and get two 80GB WDSE drives.

One thing that I have not seen mentioned here is the improvement using photo editing tools. I often find myself working with several 5MB+ .psd (Photo Shop) files. I definately think going RAID 0 will show a significant speed increase.

Cheers
Z

I used to think that RAID 0 was great, but I have never seen a significant performance improvment over one quick HD. It may help slightly in some things but I think most of the improvments people see are psychological. (Please post a link or provide evidence to prove me wrong, if I am, I'll glady setup a RAID 0 in my next system.)

The only benift I would agree with is that you split the wear and tear across two drives, but then you also significantly increase the probibility of data loss because you are dependant on both drives functioning.

I use RAID 0...two IBM "Deathstars" on HPT370 integrated into my KT7A-Raid. The performance is not 'psychological.' Unfortunately, I can't provide you with a link to my brain. The only 'evidence' I have is that games and apps do load faster. I happen to use the computers of friends and family a lot as well and going from mine to their's is a noticeable difference. Moving files around the network, large movie files, photoshop, etc all faster on mine. Funny how some build rocketships for computers and neglect one of the slower components of the total package.

I guess a good example of the speed of a PROPERLY CONFIGURED RAID 0 setup is this: playing bf1942 at my Uncle's house, him on his computer with RAID 0 and me on my aunt's computer (same computer...same processor, same ram, etc...just no raid). He would load the map and be playing the level in a very short time...meanwhile, my aunt's computer was chugging away, taking much much longer. Absurdly long. I am not a patient man, next time I bring my own computer along. Yes, its that annoying.

I guess you can boil it down to: do you trust some pinhead writing a review saying there isn't a noticeable improvement in RAID 0, or all the people chiming in here saying how much they like it and wouldn't go back to a normal setup. Yeah. If I said that I went from a 5400 RPM drive to a 7200 and saw a performance increase in daily use, I wouldn't be considered crazy. So why is it when I say I notice a difference with RAID 0, I am crazy? Well I'm crazy anyway, but thats not the point. For those on the edge....get 2 smaller HDD's (not like you need 2 120GB), run a RAID 0 and get all the benefits of a larger HDD, faster performance, and not for much more cost, raid cards can be had for cheap, and the price differential on integrated isn't a big deal. Just do it.

man raid sounds so sweet!! now can somebody bum me 190bucks?

Papa_Legba, I have set up RAID 0 several times before, and maybe I haven't given it a fair chance, or maybe the raid device I used sucked, but I noticed a decrease in performance if anything.
(All other hardware being equal.)

I would simply like hard evidence rather than opinions. Any numbers I have seen show no improvement.

Movax said:

Papa_Legba, I have set up RAID 0 several times before, and maybe I haven't given it a fair chance, or maybe the raid device I used sucked, but I noticed a decrease in performance if anything.
(All other hardware being equal.)

I would simply like hard evidence rather than opinions. Any numbers I have seen show no improvement.

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Well I absolutely agree with every last thing Papa said........
Except I don't have BF1942, but I do have UT2003, NASCAR2003 and MS Combat FSim3. MSCFS3 is a data hog with extremely large files and UT2003 is pretty large also. I can be running in any of these games in a matter of seconds, not a minute, nor 10s of seconds, but in less than 15 to 20 seconds for any of them.

While you say you would like to see hard evidence about RAID 0, many reviews on the subject does in fact show that RAID 0 is faster in loading files than a single HD. Remember no HD or RAID will make your game or anything else run faster, BUT it makes everything load faster. I am afraid you will be waiting a very long time to see the magical numbers you are looking for. Personally I don't fully trust any review, but would rather read and talk to people, like here, who has actually had hands on experience with something so I can make my final judgement.

Honestly, even the review sites, when it comes down to it, are only giving their opinions also. No matter what criteria is used for a test, it is still subjective based upon the quirks and limitations of the tests involved, plus the bias of the reviewer. (Yes everyone has some bias concerning everything.)

Your very best reviewers are these guys, here in the forums, who posts here and elsewhere about their very own experiences. It's called real life experience, and no test, no reviewer can duplicate it!

Cheers,
Mike

The thing that I find funny about this thread is that everyone who is in favour of RAID0 talks about how much faster it is at READING data, no one mentions how much faster it is at writting. RAID0 is most certainly faster at writting data, there is no question about that BUT it is NOT faster at reading data and a good 80% (my estimate) of all hard drive accessing is READING not WRITTING. RAID0 is at best equal to a single hard drive at reading data.

Below is an article from MaximumPC which shows that RAID0 is slower at reading data then a single drive, in fairness they later did a follow up to that article which showed that RAID0 did perform better at reading data then it did in this article but NOT better then a single drive.

Perhaps everyone's belief that RAID0 is faster at reading is less 'psychological' and more to do with the fact that in order to set up the RAID0 array they must reinstall windows, I know that my normal boot up times are less then 30 seconds (40gig drive with 20 to 30 gigs used, defragged normally and defragged using the 'defrag c: -b' command at the command prompt which defrags all boot files) but after a format and reinstall of windows my boot up times are around 10 seconds with no defragging at all. Significantly faster, and yes games load faster too.

Anyway here is that article:

DaddyB said:

The thing that I find funny about this thread is that everyone who is in favour of RAID0 talks about how much faster it is at READING data, no one mentions how much faster it is at writting. RAID0 is most certainly faster at writting data, there is no question about that BUT it is NOT faster at reading data and a good 80% (my estimate) of all hard drive accessing is READING not WRITTING. RAID0 is at best equal to a single hard drive at reading data.

Below is an article from MaximumPC which shows that RAID0 is slower at reading data then a single drive, in fairness they later did a follow up to that article which showed that RAID0 did perform better at reading data then it did in this article but NOT better then a single drive.

Perhaps everyone's belief that RAID0 is faster at reading is less 'psychological' and more to do with the fact that in order to set up the RAID0 array they must reinstall windows, I know that my normal boot up times are less then 30 seconds (40gig drive with 20 to 30 gigs used, defragged normally and defragged using the 'defrag c: -b' command at the command prompt which defrags all boot files) but after a format and reinstall of windows my boot up times are around 10 seconds with no defragging at all. Significantly faster, and yes games load faster too.

Anyway here is that article:

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Well if you wish to believe that RAID 0 doesn't read any faster than a single HD, be my guest. If you wish to believe what MaximumPC or another reviewer has to say, be my guest.(But you just proved one of my contentions against reviews because you showed the reviewer at MaxPC had already biased himself and had to change his figures at least once that we know of.)

And it may be 'psychological' and I may be paronoid, but I would bet that my RAID 0 will outload any similarly configured PC running a single HD any day! Go ahead and load UT2k3 or CFS3 in under 15 secs! You can't do it with a single HD!(Plus if one wants to believe benchmarks, then most would and will show RAID 0 writting as well as READING files faster than a single HD!)

I've been around way to many computer systems to agree with you! But this is somewhat of a free country, where you can believe most whatever you want to, and if you want to believe what you stated above, you are free to do so. And I am free to believe the oppisite..... So if you feel comforted by running a single HD and belive you haven't lost any reading abilities to RAID, then you're satisfied. Just don't expect everyone to agree with you. OTOH every's mmv.......

Cheers,
Mike
BTW in HD Tach my 2 HD RAID 0 gives an average data read transfer rate of about 50 megs per second. Much faster than what MaxPC shows! I wonder why?..... huuum? Maybe they didn't do something right? Or are they biased in some way? Maybe they don't know any better? Personally I don't waste much time on review sites like that.

Raid O

Daddy B is right on it. I have built and ran Single and Raid on the same computer. I found single faster in games and surfing. I wanted to know why, after being told that raid 0 was faster. I asked a...A+, 5 MCSE certs, Novel, Cisco, certified IT instructor why raid seemed slower. He told me because it IS SLOWER.
It does have to do with the difference between reading and writing on hdd's. I do not see a difference when PLAYING any game.
Will I still buy and use raid mobo or pci card??????? Yep, because I like having a drive on each controller. I can install 8 devices with raid controller. That makes it worth the small extra expense to me.
Just my 2 cents. I guess beauty is still in the eye of the beholder and perceived speed is necessary for the impatient.
LOL

Re: Raid O

paupton said:

Daddy B is right on it. I have built and ran Single and Raid on the same computer. I found single faster in games and surfing. I wanted to know why, after being told that raid 0 was faster. I asked a...A+, 5 MCSE certs, Novel, Cisco, certified IT instructor why raid seemed slower. He told me because it IS SLOWER.
It does have to do with the difference between reading and writing on hdd's. I do not see a difference when PLAYING any game.
Will I still buy and use raid mobo or pci card??????? Yep, because I like having a drive on each controller. I can install 8 devices with raid controller. That makes it worth the small extra expense to me.
Just my 2 cents. I guess beauty is still in the eye of the beholder and perceived speed is necessary for the impatient.
LOL

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Jesus H Christ man; how many times do I have to say that having RAID DOES NOT make any games play faster? How many times?

And yes RAID can be slower if one does not use a controller that matches well with their HDs. (Most times pci add on RAID controllers will be faster than onboard.) And any RAID can be slower if the RAID is improperly configured!

So I guess you are getting average read rates of 50 MB/sec in HD Tach with your single HD?

Mike

a big part of raid is the hardware involved... some drive/controller combos seem to work a lot better than others. plus i have also heard that a decent amount of the time that you can get what you pay for when it comes to a raid controller...

one reason i run a raid0 setup is because i hate having tons of different drive letters... it's nice for all of the information to be on one single letter... of course i do see some improvement in speed. it's not like it is a 2x speed increase, but i can sure tell you that adobe photoshop opens ridiculously fast... aol 8.0 also comes up very quick. i had to use aol the other day when the resnet went down at school... i find that raid can be beneficial when it is set up pretty well... my avg seek time for the drives is listed at 9 ms and that is what sandra reports individually... together in raid it was 8 ms... no big difference really but it was an improvement... i think large file transfers go faster as well... but that's just what i think...

My first experiences in setting up a RAID was with the HighPoint Technologies Onboard RAID controller, which was integrated on my Abit mobo. 1st go round was somewhat better than either one of the HDs I was using. My 2nd try when I updated mobos and HDs was even better, but not a whole lot, maybe 1/4 to 1/3 faster than a single HD. These were the Maxtor 540X HDS. On my next HD upgrade I got the Maxtor 740X HDs, and my RAID benchmarks went to pot, plus my system slowed up overall concerning my HDs RAIDed. Try as I mite I couldn't get the HP Technologies onboard RAID controller on my Abit mobo to work decently. (On a side note, many Abit users has reported boot problems as well as low scores using Abit's onboard HPT RAID. I was no exception. I had boot problems almost the whole time I used HPT onboard RAID.) I switched to a pci Promise TX2000 and my RAID scores doubled from those of the HPT onboard RAID. And my boot problems went away!

Just another example of people who may listen and believe too much of what review sites has had to say about HPT RAID. If you listened to and believed them you would believe that HPT RAID is the fastest RAID controllers you can get...... BOLOGNA! Using them is what helps give RAID the negative publicity. But I am convinced that some people do have extremely good luck with HPT RAID......

BTW I ditched Abit mobos altogether and went to Asus my last mobo (P4PE) partly because of the poor performance of HP Tech onboard RAID. So if Abit wants to hurt themselves using the HPT RAID controller, they need not count on me as a customer. I doubt I'd go back anyways because I like the extra features on the Asus mobos.

Mike

Haha some people and review sites are just funny, I was amazed at the speed increase from going from onboard IDE to my sata controller on my a7n8x board, really boosted performance, then I had a customer order a pc running two 80gb se drives in raid 0 useing the onboard sata onthe a7n8x and DAMN!!!! what a difference, anyone that says raid 0 does not help much or that it is not that noticable is either lying that they have a raid 0 setup or the setup they are useing is not setup correct. I was so impressed with the speed increase on this particular system that is pretty much identicle to mine that I just ordered in two 40gb se drives from newegg for my os and I am going to use my 160gb se drive for backup.

I see it this way, allot of people cannot notice an increase in hp after a tuneup on their car and they say it feels the same and everything, I drive it and notice all the differences immedialty for I am a car guy, we throw it on the dyno and sure enough 12hp gain haha. And someone said a raid 0 setup cannot read any faster??? what the heck is that review site smoking, you have to be nuts to claim that, saw with my own eyes a 1gb file transfer onto the raid 0 setup in 32 seconds *LOL*

Anyways I guess if your a harcore pc guy then raid 0 really does matter, but if your "that guy" that drives the civic with the grapefruit launcher saying how fast his 18 second civic is with 600 shot of nos and 15" tach then you really have no idea what true performance is *LOL*

BTW I ditched Abit mobos altogether and went to Asus my last mobo (P4PE) partly because of the poor performance of HP Tech onboard RAID. So if Abit wants to hurt themselves using the HPT RAID controller, they need not count on me as a customer. I doubt I'd go back anyways because I like the extra features on the Asus mobos.

Mike [/B]

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Now that you mention it, my mobo was a MSI with built in HP tech raid controller. It gave me fits also. I finally quit running raid and just used all four ide connectors to run a device.
This time around I bought Asus A7n8X deluxe that has raid on board. I however, am going to use the Adaptec RAID ATA 1200A PCI card. It seems anything Adaptec does is very compatible. I also will be using two WD 80 GB ata 100 w/8 meg. I may be wrong, but I dont think I can buy any better equipment than this. The last time I had good success with RAID was 6 years ago with SCSI setup. I am going to try raid again.
Wish me luck

paupton said:

Now that you mention it, my mobo was a MSI with built in HP tech raid controller. It gave me fits also. I finally quit running raid and just used all four ide connectors to run a device.
This time around I bought Asus A7n8X deluxe that has raid on board. I however, am going to use the Adaptec RAID ATA 1200A PCI card. It seems anything Adaptec does is very compatible. I also will be using two WD 80 GB ata 100 w/8 meg. I may be wrong, but I dont think I can buy any better equipment than this. The last time I had good success with RAID was 6 years ago with SCSI setup. I am going to try raid again.
Wish me luck

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I haven't directly dealt with Adaptec hardware, but it should be ok. Right now I'd say go with any RAID controllers that are from Silicone Image. They are cheap and I've heard some incredible results from them. Most of them from this forum. My brother just got one and he likes it. It is his first go at RAID also. He got his from Newegg. But the Adaptec should be fine if you prefer it.

Last year about this time, the Abit forum here had a bunch of threads complaining about the HPT controllers, myself among them. And every time I go back there or elsewhere, if I look I can usually find a recent post about HP Tech onboard RAID problems.

Cheers,
Mike