RAID0 Aint All That Unsafe Unlike People Say It Is!

OK.... Well... its been 2 years..

And the RAID0 config in my second rig is still running smooth. In the rig is one Maxtor 40GB ATA-100 7200RPM and the second drive is a Quantum Fireball 40GB ATA-100 7200RPM.

These drives have been on 24/7 and have been working on lots of stuff like government papers (My sis works for government) and music, videos and other heavy HDisk stuff.

My RAID is also now six months old and not a hickup.

I just wanted to let people know that RAID0 aint all that unsafe as people say it is. The performance advantage is just to large to ignore.


OC-Master

Maybe for you. But some of us have had to deal with broken stripes and a loss of data. Once that happens you get really cautious about trusting a raid array with out being religous about backing everything up. I had a broken stripe twice without a harddrive going bad. after that I went to raid 1. I recently just formated that box and have Mandrake 9 on it without raid. My advice is to be very careful because if one drive goes all of your data is gone. And back up all important data constantly. Good luck

yeah, i believe i hear this too often too. what is the deal with broken stripe/RAID arrays? what causes?

I've been running for a little over a year on IBMS, till they went bad (the drives, NOT the array).

AND that RAID 0 array even kept info. while changing motherboards to different onboard controller versions!

Now I have 2 WD SE drives in RAID 0 in my main rig, and the two IBM's I got back from RMA in RAID 0 in my second "backup" rig.


but as far as failure goes - i haven't understood why an array would get a broken stripe unless a drive goes bad (or some other catastrophic failure) yet people are always harping that it is prone to failure.

Not that you shouldn't backup your data anyhow....

The thing is I never figured out why. That is the problem there are many factors that could cause a broken stripe from harddrive failure to a power outage. All I know is that it happened to me and once bitten twice shy. Backup your Data on a regular basis because it can happen just like something could happen to one drive but it is more likely to happen on a raid 0 array. If you want a better option go raid 5 more expensive but much better considering you can lose a drive pop another in and reconstruct without the loss of Data.

RAID0 means you have one set of data on two disks. Each physical disk has a chance to fail. If either fails, you've lost the data set. Running RAID0 simply means you increase your chances of losing that data.

"Backup your Data on a regular basis because it can happen just like something could happen to one drive but it is more likely to happen on a raid 0 array. If you want a better option go raid 5 more expensive but much better considering you can lose a drive pop another in and reconstruct without the loss of Data."

"... being religous about backing everything up. "

The former is not especially good advice. The latter is. There is only one issue that I have harped on over and over again: Backup your data -- WHATEVER YOU DEEM IMPORTANT! I believe that I am in the minority of this opinion, but I don't budge from this point. I've also seen a lot of people advise to use RAID 1 for safety. Whether it is RAID-1 or RAID-5 makes no difference. If something is deleted either maliciously or accidently, mirroring does not fix the problem. Also, sometimes the OS goes bad and you end up with unworkable drives through that route. I've seen plenty of times where people whine because they RAIDED and lost data. Guess what: It's your bloody fault! If you are in the "I don't have time" category, the you need to re-prioritize what you are doing and MAKE time to back up. ALL of the servers that I use professionally have mirroring -- without exception. You know what? All of them also take backups. If the backups do not happened, I can (and should) be dismissed as incompetent.

Here's my new (probably somebody else has already coined it) catch-phrase:


Back up or shut up.


(flames welcome, I guess I earned 'em).

Dave

(back to the original post. That mugambo is an @SS. )

I have not experienced any data loss from RAID-0 so far. I agree with you OC: RAID-0 is fine.


Dave

RAID-0 is fine, yes. But you DOUBLE the chance of losing your data.

mugambo said:

"Backup your Data on a regular basis because it can happen just like something could happen to one drive but it is more likely to happen on a raid 0 array. If you want a better option go raid 5 more expensive but much better considering you can lose a drive pop another in and reconstruct without the loss of Data."

"... being religous about backing everything up. "

The former is not especially good advice. The latter is. There is only one issue that I have harped on over and over again: Backup your data -- WHATEVER YOU DEEM IMPORTANT! I believe that I am in the minority of this opinion, but I don't budge from this point. I've also seen a lot of people advise to use RAID 1 for safety. Whether it is RAID-1 or RAID-5 makes no difference. If something is deleted either maliciously or accidently, mirroring does not fix the problem. Also, sometimes the OS goes bad and you end up with unworkable drives through that route. I've seen plenty of times where people whine because they RAIDED and lost data. Guess what: It's your bloody fault! If you are in the "I don't have time" category, the you need to re-prioritize what you are doing and MAKE time to back up. ALL of the servers that I use professionally have mirroring -- without exception. You know what? All of them also take backups. If the backups do not happened, I can (and should) be dismissed as incompetent.

Here's my new (probably somebody else has already coined it) catch-phrase:


Back up or shut up.


(flames welcome, I guess I earned 'em).

Dave

Click to expand...

I am going on the assumption that you mean my raid 5 advice is not good in your opinion. I was just pointing out the advantages of raid 5 over raid 0. If you would like to tell me why that is not a better option please do. Well for one this is a thread about Raid 0. And Raid 5 is a better option period. The reason for this is that you can lose a drive pop another in and all your data is still there. Now as for backups that should be done regardless of using raid 0, raid 5, or not using raid. but if you are using raid 0 you better be more concerned with backing up your data.

Most all of my servers are RAID-5. I am NOT under any circumstances saying that RAID-5 is bad. As a fact of matter, I am a RAID-5 freak. What I am in fact saying is that doing RAID-5 or RAID-1 without taking backups is ill-advised. I have seen lots of peeps that think doing either RAID-1 or RAID-5 somehow relieves the obligation to otherwise take backups.


W R O N G ! ! !


What I will say is that buying a PIO-3 disk and taking backups is WAY safer for protecting data than the RAID only scenario without any other backup plan. (NOT that I would recommending buying a PIO-3 disk and doing this! The latter is a bit of a hyperbole, but the point is still valid.)

Dave

Two 40 gig Maxtor 7200 Diamondmax Plus drives in RAID 0 for 18 months now, no problems, ever. This has seen 160FSB.

Kendan said:

Maybe for you. But some of us have had to deal with broken stripes and a loss of data. Once that happens you get really cautious about trusting a raid array with out being religous about backing everything up. I had a broken stripe twice without a harddrive going bad. after that I went to raid 1. I recently just formated that box and have Mandrake 9 on it without raid. My advice is to be very careful because if one drive goes all of your data is gone. And back up all important data constantly. Good luck

Click to expand...

But Kendan, you know what, how did your stipe break??? There is no reason for a stripe to break unless you are overclocking the FSB behond exceptable limits. At this point, your just asking for the chance of an error to come up.

The only way a stripe can break is hardware wise, or through a Virus or Parasite.


OC-Master

donny_paycheck said:

Two 40 gig Maxtor 7200 Diamondmax Plus drives in RAID 0 for 18 months now, no problems, ever. This has seen 160FSB.

Click to expand...

If Donny can do it then we should be able to do it as well. If your scepticle about loosing the raid due to power outage than get an APS system and get peace of mind. Keep your system clear of virus's and paracites as well as run scan disk once a month. Scandisk can actually patch bad sectors if any were introduced and your raid would be find untill 99.9% full.

I bet my system will be fine like my sisters even two years from now.


OC-Master

mugambo said:

Most all of my servers are RAID-5. I am NOT under any circumstances saying that RAID-5 is bad. As a fact of matter, I am a RAID-5 freak. What I am in fact saying is that doing RAID-5 or RAID-1 without taking backups is ill-advised. I have seen lots of peeps that think doing either RAID-1 or RAID-5 somehow relieves the obligation to otherwise take backups.


W R O N G ! ! !


What I will say is that buying a PIO-3 disk and taking backups is WAY safer for protecting data than the RAID only scenario without any other backup plan. (NOT that I would recommending buying a PIO-3 disk and doing this! The latter is a bit of a hyperbole, but the point is still valid.)

Dave

Click to expand...

Can you reread my post and tell me what you disagreed with. I made a point to stress backing up. And the way you put it it sounded like you meant Raid 5. Thanks in advance for clarifying.

OC-Master said:

But Kendan, you know what, how did your stipe break??? There is no reason for a stripe to break unless you are overclocking the FSB behond exceptable limits. At this point, your just asking for the chance of an error to come up.

The only way a stripe can break is hardware wise, or through a Virus or Parasite.


OC-Master

Click to expand...

There is no but. I still do not know what caused it to break either time it did. At the time I was not overclocked. And you are wrong there are so many ways for it to break that your list of three does not even come close. My point is to not take it for granted and to back up religously. If you want to argue that go right ahead but you will not win because that is the only way to protect yourself if a drive fails or if the stripe breaks.

I am also sick of people saying RAID0 is unsafe. I have been running RAID0 for a loooong time with no problems. As OC-Master says, there is no way you can ignore the performance of RAID0.

I backup frequently "just in case", but I have never needed to use any of these backups.

It's not a matter of one setup being "unsafe" or not. It's a matter of distributing/adding failure chances as I said above.

The suggestion that failure only occurs when overclocking or when lightning strikes is misleading. I have had many harddrives and only two *ever* failed me; but both in normal operation.

As for the odds of such a physical failure; it is my impression that modern IDE disks at least are more failure prone than they used to be. Maybe it's because of the faster speed squeezing the last drop from mechanical parts, or maybe because these drives are more and more cheaply-produced parts nowadays. The packaging IDE drives often come in (a mere silver plastic bag) and the reduced 1-year warranty on them (8mb/deluxe disks aside) are also indications that failure may be lurking sooner than you'd think.

theotherphil said:

I am also sick of people saying RAID0 is unsafe. I have been running RAID0 for a loooong time with no problems. As OC-Master says, there is no way you can ignore the performance of RAID0.

I backup frequently "just in case", but I have never needed to use any of these backups.

Click to expand...

That is fine. It is the people who do not make backups that are SOL if and when it fails. I am not saying it is not worth the risk only that if you are going to do it don't cry when you lose everything because you didn't back everything up. As for a better solution it is Raid 5. I am sorry you are sick of hearing it is unsafe but if it happened to you you would be saying it too. Good luck.

Kendan:

Sorry for not misunderstanding what you are saying.

"... It is the people who do not make backups that are SOL if and when it fails. I am not saying it is not worth the risk only that if you are going to do it don't cry when you lose everything because you didn't back everything up."

Man, I can't agree more.

Dave

mugambo said:

Kendan:

Sorry for not misunderstanding what you are saying.

"... It is the people who do not make backups that are SOL if and when it fails. I am not saying it is not worth the risk only that if you are going to do it don't cry when you lose everything because you didn't back everything up."

Man, I can't agree more.

Dave

Click to expand...

no problem I was just confused about what you were disagreeing with.