Why Raid 0?

[zabomb4163]

you serious? I have 15gigs of mp3's alone
more than 35 for divx movies

have you ever done a raw avi stream? files easily get over 10gig

 

[XWRed1]

not sure why. but it just doesnt make a difference in raid0

Do you have any proof of this? Only thing I can think of is the cache might be half as effective because half of itself because it is going to be buffering bits that aren't actually directly contiguous to the file request, although they may be contiguous overall.

 

[BSK21]

maybe i should get 4 80GB 8MB Cache WD for RAID 0+1

FAST & SECURE

 

[Pla]

If you want to get even faster performance then 2x raptors, you could go for 4x raptors in raid-0 and hardware raid card (it will have at least 4x channels. There are even some cards with 6 and 8 channels. And all hardware raid cards support raid-5 which is best bet for 3 or mare drives.
It will beat the hell out of any 2x raid-0.

Or to be honest, if performance is the most important and not price, there are plenty of 15000 rpm scsi drives which are way faster then raptors. So you could go 4x scsi 15k drives in raid-5.
Very good performance and secure.

But I have to admit raptor is cheap drive compared to scsi drives.

As for the space - it's true most pepole don't need more the 60GB of space.
As for me - I need it to edit movies from the camcorder. Usualy 1 tape (1 hr) takes about 9-10GB of space uncompressed. And to be able to edit I need it uncompressed. So far I have filled only 90GB - 6 tapes with some of them edited and mpeged ...

 

[Cjwinnit]

Why doesn't the cache help? Does buffering reads and writes all of a sudden not work because of raid? Thats very surprising and doubtful.

It's thought to be true, and thinking about it, I can see why.

Each drive (in a 2 drive RAID 0 setup) gets half the data, and that subset of data can use all the cache of the Drive. so a 2 drive RAID 0 setup with 2mb drives will act like it has 4mb cache.

So instead of comparing 2mb cache to 8mb cache, you are comparing 4mb to 16mb. I'm guessing it doesn't make much difference as 4mb is pretty decent anyway..

If you are starting on RAID 0, having two new 40Gig drives with 2mb cache will beat any parallel ATA IDE drive on the market.

 

[madcow235]

You could get 4x WD80mbs but the pci bus will be so saturated it will be scary.

 

[Cjwinnit]

You could get 4x WD80mbs but the pci bus will be so saturated it will be scary.

Hmm.. RAID 0 with 4 drives gives you about 2.5 to 3 times the read/write speed, so I'm guessing the bottleneck would be the PCI bus.

I strongly recommend against putting 4 drives in RAID 0, unless you don't care at all about data safety.

 

[attack]

I've had 4 IDE 80gb 8mb ATA133 drives all on a PCI RAID card running RAID 0 (rocketRAID 404) and the performance was no better than on the 2 channel RAID card running RAID 0. You get dimishing returns very fast after 2 drives in a RAID 0. Pretty much SCSI is the only way more than 2 drives will help in a RAID 0...I've yet to see benchs showing more than 2 drives in RAID 0 outperforming a regular old 2 drive array (this only goes for IDE...*MAYBE* SATA might change this a tad but it doubt it. Also just ask people to start posting benches with the same controller and different size drives, I got rid of my whole array setup because there was no point in having awesome 80gb 8mb drives and 4 channel RAID card that would perform as good as 2mb cache drives and pretty much any old 2 channel RAID card.

If you want the best buy a hardware SCSI RAID card with U320 drives, if you want the best you pay the most, simply as that. Raptors are nice but the price tag alone hurts em....but they'll continue to come down.

 

[Beast Of Blight]

LOL don't get the raptors? Depends on how deep your pocket is...

I myself would trade speed for space any day. I have two 80gb's, and I'm stuck wondering what the #%! I'm gonna do with all that space. If I have every game, every application I own installed, I am still using under 15gb.

I have a 4.2gb Seagate as my backup drive (for MP3's and the like), and I still have more space than I'll ever know what to do with.

Some people feel the need to have 240gb of storage, when for a lot of people it's mostly wasted space.

The Raptor seems like a seriously expensive component because it's only 37gb. For the space junkies, this would seem like a bad idea, because they like all the space they can get their hands on.

Truth is-- you stick two raptors in Raid 0, and not only will you have the fastest drive combination on the planet (short of super expensive solutions that I'm not aware of), you will also have close to 80gb.

Ask yourself how much space you really need?

The raptors are selling for about 20-30$ more than the 120gb 8mb cache Hitachi's. Check out tom's hardware of the like to see if the extra performace justifies that extra 20-30$.

Hey, I could fill 240gigs of space in a WEEK!! I need space, All I have is a 60gig and a 12gig and their both full to the bursting point.

God I wish I had the money to invest in 4 300Gig harddrives in a Raid Array. . . . . Muahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

[penquissciguy]

My vote would be for the extra 80 GB WD 8 MB cache and run them RAID 0. You get to play with RAID, you get another drive w/a 3 year warranty, and you end up with plenty of storage. Raptors are great and all, but they're still quite expensive and haven't been around long enough to establish a good reputation for reliability.

Ken

 

[adelphia83]

Who keeps RAW AVI streams sitting on the hard drive? Sure I have them sometimes only temporarily when burning VCD's or converting DIVX movies to something other, but I don't know of anybody that keeps them on there....

As for the DIVX movies, MP3's, and other junk, I make a habit of burning these to CD. I go through to many Linux / Windows installs to think about partitioning or storing files on my Raid array.

So yeah if I added them all up I'd probably have a good 40-50gb or so, but still I don't think I'll ever find a use for 160gb as long as I have a CD burner kickin around.

I guess those who need the space shouldn't go after the Raptors. The price per GB is about 4X that of lets say a Hitachi 120gb 8mb cache...

 

[attack]

adelphia....why not setup a like 10 gb C drive, and the rest D or whatever for all your junk/mp3 files, that way you can format the C reinstall the OS completly fresh and no need to transfer all those files from CD, I reinstall about every 3 months and would go insane waiting for about 20-30gb's to go from CD to HDD!

 

[XWRed1]

Hey, I could fill 240gigs of space in a WEEK!!

Wow that is alot of warez. Do you use it all or are you one of those packrat types?

 

[Kingdom]

well, tbh i think i still have some 70gb left on 120gb disk, and im using the 2 new raptors as c: nd d: (games) so the 120gb will fit in as a mp3/divx/programs and rest of the **** storage, pretty sure i could do with the raptors alone and also im not using half the stuff i got laying around, pretty sure im not even using 1/4, i just hate deleting it cus "what if" i someday are going to need some of it, it would most likely be the day after i would have deleted it.

i would advise him to get another 80giga disk, i were almost bout to do the same, but i get hdd pretty cheap through work so the raptors werent a major setback at all, and i'd like t see what the fuzz is all about.

 

[PhobMX]

maybe its not true, but i heard somebody said that raid0 is worthless if you are going to use partitions, any thoughts on this??? i personaly have 7 partitions in my hd right now, because i sepparate movies, os and swapfiles

 

[Kingdom]

hope ur wrong phobmx!!

 

[adelphia83]

That statement is only partially true (well not really). The reason several partitions in a Raid0 setup is not as beneficial is because some of the partitions are being placed at the end (slower) part of the disk.

It is worthwhile to make sure the operating system is the first partition (usually is), and create partitions accordingly.

The end of the disk is always quite a bit slower than the beginning. Run ATTO or an equivelent benchmark on each partition, and you'll see to what extent I'm talking about.

 

[PhobMX]

ohh ok, ill get a second wd SE then...

 

[Pla]

ohh ok, ill get a second wd SE then...

LOL, way to go!

maybe its not true, but i heard somebody said that raid0 is worthless if you are going to use partitions, any thoughts on this??? i personaly have 7 partitions in my hd right now, because i sepparate movies, os and swapfiles

The partitions issue is no different with or without raid.
Also if you place the system on the first partition (let's say 10GB) in a raid-0 system this will be on the first 5GB of both disks, so it will be extra faster.

What I want to say is that with raid-0 you notice much more the difference between the partitions.

Let's say you have 50GB disk with speeds from 10 to 50 MB/s.

Now lets say the speeds for every 10GB is:
0-10 GB speed is 50 MB/s
10-20 speed is 40 MB/s
20-30 ... 30 MB/s
30-40 ... 20 MB/s
40-50 ... 10 MB/s

Let's compare 2 partitions C - the first 20GB and X - the last 20GB.

non-raid speeds should be avarage
C ... 45MB/s ( (40+50)/2 )
X ... 15 MB/s ( (10+20)/2 )

raid-0 (assume 2x speed)
C ... 100 MB/s (2x50) - it uses the first 10GB of each drive
X ... 20 MB/s (2x10) - it uses the last 10GB of each drive

So the performance ratio C/X is
non-raid ... 45/15 = 3:1
raid-0 ... 100/20 = 5:1

So raid is still better just that you have to know how to use it more effectively.

 

[adelphia83]

Check out www.storagereview.com

It will tell you what to expect as far as speed goes from the beginning to the end of the drive.

It is nowhere near a 40mb/sec difference between the beginning and end (I know that value was used as an example, I'm just pointing this out to clear up any confusion that may result)

Most drives have a speed difference of *about* 20mb/sec between the beginning and end of the drive.

So the partition at the end of the disk(s) will be slower, but not considerably. Add to the fact that you're using a RAID setup, and the end of the drive's partition will be roughly twice as fast as it would in a single drive setup.

So the statement "raid arrays are worthless in multi-partition setups" is completely untrue.