• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Raid vs dedicated drive for games, OS, etc?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

bonefish5

Registered
Joined
Oct 8, 2006
Location
NC
Ok I thought I saw an opinion on this way back sometime ago, but can't locate it.

Currently I am running a raid 0 setup thinking it would improve my speed. I have become more concerned with some security so I have attached a NAS system to my network which includes a raid configuration so my data is backed up with a mirror copy for safety.

On to my question: Is setting up multiple drives with the OS on one, games on another and other apps on another a stupid idea? I'm getting ready to blast my system and reinstall the OS. So I thought I might try something different. Opinions? positve or negative...

Thanks
Mark
 
On to my question: Is setting up multiple drives with the OS on one, games on another and other apps on another a stupid idea? I'm getting ready to blast my system and reinstall the OS. So I thought I might try something different. Opinions? positve or negative...

Thanks
Mark
I've broken up two 2-drive RAID0 arrays in the past to test such a setup and never found a benefit vs. everything on a single drive or compared to the RAID0 arrays. To say it another way, while I haven't seen an improvement in everything I do with a RAID0 array, and even some of the improvements are very small, I've never timed a quicker response with a single or two seperated OS/app drives in any type of usage.
 
raid 0 may make some games load faster,. other then that they offer no performance games once a game is running.

i say just use the 2 seperate drives, i have done it all, raid, single, games on OS drive and with drives these days being good, i now run my Steam games from my OS drive and things load just as fast as they did on a seperate drive and not much slower then when i had raid 0, but now i dont have the worry of data lose as bad as before.
 
so, according to your words single HDDs setup is more reliable then running on RAID? So what about performance with office applications and network file sharing? Does it work faster in RAID when someone download something from this hdds?
 
so, according to your words single HDDs setup is more reliable then running on RAID? So what about performance with office applications and network file sharing? Does it work faster in RAID when someone download something from this hdds?

The thought behind a single drive being more reliable is that there is only one weak spot. With RAID you have more drives which means that there is more possibility of one of those drives failing and taking the entire setup with it. Thought it is faster to have a RAID setup. Programs that are being used from your computer will load faster if they are stored on a RAID. As far off of the network there are many factors that play in but if you set all of those aside once the info gets to your HDDs they will read/write the information faster. To answer your questions outright: yes, faster, yes. :D
 
You can have your cake and eat it too. Look at RAID 1+0(10), or 0+1(01). Also, raid 100, 50, 60, even just RAID 5 or 6.

I personally will RAID0 for load times on the OS drive(s). I then RAID1 my files on the storage drive(s). In addition, I have a NAS which copies the storage drive(s). I don't care if the OS drive bites it, I put all the backups for the OS drive on the storage drive.
 
Thank you!

I think that ill do the following/ I will run 2 hdds in raid, and 1 single for data backup)))
 
^^^ Technically, Raid 0 is not Raid. Raid is Redundant Array of Inexpensive/independant Disks. The whole point of actual Raid is Data security and backup. But with a Raid 0 setup, the drives are mirrored and you get no redundancy. So technically, running all your data off a single depends on that drive for reliability, where as Raid 0 has to count on both drives working. :shrug:
 
As for me performance is a main target))) so ill put applications, games and OS onto RAID drives. distribs and other valuable data to a single drive.
 
I put my OS and large programs that i use a lot (Adobe Suite, Office Suite, conversion programs, ect) onto my fastest drive. (SSD). Then my games go onto the next fastest drive (That 5 year old 250GB drive... faster than my 320) and then Media (Music, videos, pictures, installers, ect) onto the slowest/largest drive.
I've honestly found this to work better than a RAID of two 320's... idk why, but that RAID was just SLOW at loading some games, and boot times weren't improved much. Loading Crysis off of one drive is faster than my RAID was for some reason, so i just run it like this.

I think i really screwed up that RAID though too, so don't take my word for it haha
 
I'd go with RAID 0 if you are backing up data to another location on a regular basic. The speed increase my not be dramatic, but it is there. If you dropped in twin Raptors, then you would really see it fly. Even a single 600GB Raptor is pretty fast. I've done both the single drive setups and RAID 0, but settled on RAID 0 since I do video editing.

As long as you have good drives for your RAID setup you should see a speed boost in RAID 0.
 
I personally will RAID0 for load times on the OS drive(s).


I agree with you. My RAID 0 boots rather fast, considering its two 300 gig Vraptors, short stroked @ 30 gig each.

Not too bad; 5.3ms access time! 252MB/s Average read!
 

Attachments

  • two-Vraptors-64gig-slice-cache.JPG
    two-Vraptors-64gig-slice-cache.JPG
    99.4 KB · Views: 163
Back