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Raid Q?

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ltww

Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2002
I'm gonna use this RAID configuration 80gb RAID 0 ( 2 x 40gb Maxtor D740X fluid bearings ), but I'm a newbie to RAID. I use my computer for web design, programming and games. Will using RAID improve on performance or could it slow it down?

I really want to join two 40gb into one 80gb, but was wondering about performance.

Are there any stability issues?

And are Maxtors any good for RAID or am I better off using them as two normal 40gb drives?
 
RAID 0, aka Stripping, writes the data across two (or higher multiples of 2) drives and allows both drives to transfer data at the same time as long as you put each drive on an individual channel (IDE Connector). So you should see a noticible improvement in I/O performance. I noticed the difference immediately upon setting up my first RAID 0 config. Good luck. You can find a good basic explination of RAID 0 and it's pros and cons here.
 
Nice link. I don't have any experience with IDE RAIDS only SCSI. I don't think you can run a stripe set ( RAID 0 ) as yopu boot srive so you would need another hd to use as the boot device. All things considered you should get good performance with a stripe set compared with straight drives, but if any of those drives fail, all of you data across all drives is lost. You would have to have a way of backing that up often. Like I said I've only ran SCSI RAIDS, and usually run level 5, as it gives me decent performance and dedundancy, and only costs me one drive ( n-1)
 
Can I use a RAID controller card to boot a RAID array or will that only work with onboard RAID?
 
Yes, as with SCSI, there are settings that allow booting from the array. I haven't tried booting in such a manner since I really dislike RAID 0 and don't have enough identical hard drives for a 0+1 array. You will probably need to set the motherboard BIOS to boot from SCSI, though I'm not completely sure on this one.
 
Love this place, learning something all the time. Sorry if I caused any confusion. Although in my experience, I wouldn't want to have stripe sets as my boot . Seems like it would be hard to troubleshoot should anything go wrong. If you use another drive as the boot, at least you can get in and try to fix any problems.

Again only used the SCSI side, what are your guys take on these new IDE RAID setups. Of course the cost difference between IDE and SCSI is great, and the IDE drives are breathing down the neck of SCSI drives. Any thoughts would be appreciated, as I will be setting up a machine with RAID soon, gonna use SCSI as I'm comfortable with it. What would be the advantage besides cost of going the IDE side. Thanks
 
ltww said:
I'm gonna use this RAID configuration 80gb RAID 0 ( 2 x 40gb Maxtor D740X fluid bearings ), but I'm a newbie to RAID. I use my computer for web design, programming and games. Will using RAID improve on performance or could it slow it down?

I really want to join two 40gb into one 80gb, but was wondering about performance.

Are there any stability issues?

And are Maxtors any good for RAID or am I better off using them as two normal 40gb drives?

I've had a look round for a ATA133 RAID card, but can only find a cheapo £30 card. Just wondering if this could be any good? Its the own brand one from dabs.com

Support IDE RAID 0 (Striped set), RAID 1(Mirrored set) and RAID 0+1 (Striped+Mirror) under MicrosoftR Windows® OS
System Boot up from standard and RAID Volume supported
Support ULTRA ATA133 / 100 IDE Hard Disk Drive
Coexist with on-board IDE controller
Dual Independent IDE channels connect up to Maximum 4 IDE devices
Maximum IDE data transfer rate up to 133Mbyte / Second
Support up to 137GB Big drive with LBA addressing
On-Board Upgradeable Flash BIOS support
Easy RAID Configuration with DOS Boot up menu
Support PIO, DMA and Ultra DMA modes
PCI Local bus Revision 2.2 compliant
32-bit PCI Bus Master support
Fully PCI Plug and Play
 
ArchangelMBC

i wud have to say the main advantage is cost as u stated. I just used atto and was around 70mg/sec using raid0 with onboard promise controller, fastrack100. I think the main advantage is that ide gives excellant performance for uses that the professional graphics/audio/digital person can use. SCSI is more for server apps where files are accessed ALOT in a short period of time.
The ide has really been golden for me becuase i can use premier and run everything off my hdd without dropping frames, writing/capture to sending out to analog(vcr). It also is wonderful for realtime viewing/"panning" though my projects without stutter or drops.
I have 2 wd1000jb's set up wich gives me a grand total of approx. 192gig's of space at a performance just under the atlas10k and cheetah15k and the special editions are one of the coolest running drives to date, far cooler than scsi.

basically ide raid comes down to price/performance ratio, but for non-server apps. its the best choice:) IMO
 
Last thing...

Can I treat a RAID 0 array just like a normal single drive? Things like partitioning and formatting etc?
 
thx Ice_Gargoylle

Thanks for the info, sounds like a good deal. Maybe I'll try and get a board with both, or use a Adaptec card, as I don't want to get out of scsi, but would like to try IDE RAID. I would have to agree with you from a user standpoint, I build mostly on the server side. Thanks
 
yes, when u boot for the first time, the raid utlity will com up as showing it found disks, then u create an array with those drive to raid0. the system will reboot. Then when u boot from your os cd, it will see only 1 drive for formatting and partitioning. Then u load your os up and ur done.
 
ArchangelMBC said:
... Seems like it would be hard to troubleshoot should anything go wrong. If you use another drive as the boot, at least you can get in and try to fix any problems.

Again only used the SCSI side, what are your guys take on these new IDE RAID setups. Of course the cost difference between IDE and SCSI is great, and the IDE drives are breathing down the neck of SCSI drives. Any thoughts would be appreciated, as I will be setting up a machine with RAID soon, gonna use SCSI as I'm comfortable with it. What would be the advantage besides cost of going the IDE side. Thanks

Troubleshooting is really not an issue, if 1 drive fails your up the creek, other than that it is seen as a single drive, can be defragged etc just like a single drive. The advantages of IDE over SCSI are heat & cost. Plus, Running 1 IDE drive in a desktop is faster than running 1 SCSI in a desktop for SINGLE USER ACCESS. I'm just wondering if the same holds true for a raid array. SCSI is really designed for many many people accessing the disks at the SAME TIME, this is why they rule in servers but in a desktop environment IDE is PLENTY fast, and cheap!
 
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