RAID 0 - is it worth it?

[D0M1N13]

Hello All!

First let me get out of the way my rig specification:

Processor: i7-3930K
RAM: 16GB DDR3
Motherboard: Asus P9x79 Deluxe
Storage: 1 Samsung 850 PRO (512GB) 1 Samsung 860 PRO (512GB)
Graphic Card: Radeon HD 7970 GHZ Edition

Now that that is out of the way, I am thinking about doing a RAID 0 setup but I don't know if it is worth it. I have looked on youtube and on the internet and from what I concluded is that the Sequential reads are double but the 4K reads are not that much of an improvement. Maybe 5% of an improvement as I saw. What I will be doing on this computer of mine is photo editing and using Photoshop and Lightroom and maybe other photo editors. I will not be doing video rendering or editing. Just use my rig for photo editing activities mainly. In my case, is it worth it? Would I see any benefit from it? Would love to read your opinions and also your help.

 

[Zerileous]

Not worth it, but you seem to have already answered the question.

 

[EarthDog]

Looks like you've thought it out already.

...but this isnt for us, it's for you. Does what you've seen make it worth it for you?

 

[D0M1N13]

Looks like you've thought it out already.

...but this isnt for us, it's for you. Does what you've seen make it worth it for you?

Not really. I just thought that maybe boosting up sequential read and write speeds will improve my photoshop and lightroom applications. I get some lag when I am editing my pictures that are RAW. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of my RAM?

 

[wagex]

Not really. I just thought that maybe boosting up sequential read and write speeds will improve my photoshop and lightroom applications. I get some lag when I am editing my pictures that are RAW. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of my RAM?

only way to tell is to look at task manager when you are doing it. it also depends where you are reading the photos from, if its a usb drive or adapter it will probably give some lag when opening.

 

[EarthDog]

Not really. I just thought that maybe boosting up sequential read and write speeds will improve my photoshop and lightroom applications. I get some lag when I am editing my pictures that are RAW. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of my RAM?

Like waged said, look and see how much you are using.

It may be able to help with loads of large images and such. I assume this won't be your OS drive, so........ try it and see. If it isn't worth it, break up the array and move on.

But, honestly, that platform is pretty old and long in the tooth at this point, so I would look towards upgrading for better performance.

 

[D0M1N13]

Like waged said, look and see how much you are using.

It may be able to help with loads of large images and such. I assume this won't be your OS drive, so........ try it and see. If it isn't worth it, break up the array and move on.

But, honestly, that platform is pretty old and long in the tooth at this point, so I would look towards upgrading for better performance.

I will have to look at my RAM in the task manager if it goes high or not, you are right.

Well, I usually transfer all of my RAW files from my Nikon D750 to my partition which is an SSD. Lightroom and photoshop are reading it from the partition drive. For my scratch disk, I have it set to another drive which is an SSD.

10 years ago I have build this computer so yea it's pretty ancient lol, but I love it anyways. What I might do is maybe overclock my CPU from 3.2 GHz to 3.8 GHz and see if my RAM is being used up or not. It might give me some better performance.

 

[EarthDog]

If you are CPU dependent, an overclock will help, yep!

 

[trents]

What are you cooling the CPU with? Overclocking suggests good aftermarket cooling.

 

[D0M1N13]

What are you cooling the CPU with? Overclocking suggests good aftermarket cooling.

Hi there I have a water cooled rig.

 

[HankB]

I ran Linux with a 4 way RAID0 on 850 EVO SSDs. It provide a nice snappy system. My rationale was that SSDs are not likely to fail and I have a decent backup policy. Recently one of the drives failed. After several hours of operation one of the drives would just stop responding. Samsung replaced it without any issue and I reinstalled and restored my files from backup. It was enough of a hassle for me to buy a fifth drive and run a RAIDZ (ZFS version of RAID5) pool to insure against single drive failures. The most annoying thing about this? Even with 4 drives running in parallel, still not as fast as a decent NVME drive.

 

[mackerel]

IMO raid 0 of SSDs is only worth it in very limited scenarios where you know you need the aggregate bandwidth. Otherwise I don't think it provides a tangible improvement over running SSDs singly. Of course, with much slower HDs, raid 0 can make more sense.

I was big into photography in years past, when my main system at the time was a 6700k. 16GB of ram was more than sufficient for my uses, although if you're doing some really complicated photoshop work then more might be used. If doing processing tasks, more CPU can always help. I've not used recently Adobe products, but don't they have GPU acceleration also now? A faster GPU might help offload the CPU where supported, but I'm not familiar with the details.

 

[Woomack]

RAID0 on SSD is usually causing a performance drop in lower queue random operations so for example in games which are often loading many small files. It's barely visible during a typical daily work but may affect some specific workloads. The only thing which is faster on RAID0 is sequential bandwidth but it doesn't matter in anything but while moving large files or many files that are not spread on the drive.

 

[D0M1N13]

If you are CPU dependent, an overclock will help, yep!

Thanks! I overclocked my i7-3930k to 4.4 GHz. Although the voltage at 4.4 GHz comes out 1.44v. I think that is pretty high as my temps do come between 75 and 80C but after some minutes they go back to 65C and pick up again. But they are stable.

When I run Photoshop and Lighroom and do some RAW editing and intensive work then the processor bumps it to 4.2 GHz and sometimes to 4.4 GHz but mostly uses 4.2 GHz. Improvement I do see when I overclocked my CPU. It's faster and more smoother with intensive operations

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RAID0 on SSD is usually causing a performance drop in lower queue random operations so for example in games which are often loading many small files. It's barely visible during a typical daily work but may affect some specific workloads. The only thing which is faster on RAID0 is sequential bandwidth but it doesn't matter in anything but while moving large files or many files that are not spread on the drive.

Yes I know. That is the reason which I was thinking not to do RAID 0 and thought if those sequential reads and writes might help with my photoshop and lightroom intensive operations but unfortunately they do would not benefit at all.

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IMO raid 0 of SSDs is only worth it in very limited scenarios where you know you need the aggregate bandwidth. Otherwise I don't think it provides a tangible improvement over running SSDs singly. Of course, with much slower HDs, raid 0 can make more sense.

I was big into photography in years past, when my main system at the time was a 6700k. 16GB of ram was more than sufficient for my uses, although if you're doing some really complicated photoshop work then more might be used. If doing processing tasks, more CPU can always help. I've not used recently Adobe products, but don't they have GPU acceleration also now? A faster GPU might help offload the CPU where supported, but I'm not familiar with the details.

They do have GPU acceleration, unfortunately my GPU is not supported in most scenarios. When I go into Photoshop and Lightroom preferences I see that GPU Acceleration is grayed out and I cannot click it at all. So it looks like my Photoshop and Lightroom are using CPU instead.

 

[mackerel]

They do have GPU acceleration, unfortunately my GPU is not supported in most scenarios. When I go into Photoshop and Lightroom preferences I see that GPU Acceleration is grayed out and I cannot click it at all. So it looks like my Photoshop and Lightroom are using CPU instead.

Given the age of the GPU that isn't entirely surprising. My thinking was that if you got a more modern GPU to replace it, that could help. How much, and in what situations, I don't know. Some things will still have to fall back to the CPU regardless.