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Raid 0
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Posted by: dtr
Hi i just got 2 X 120gig maxtor diamond max plus 9 hdd's and was going to set them up as raid 0.
Ive read alot about this on the net saying if u set them up like this your making a loud statement that you do not care about that data as if it fails it fails.
Ive only ever had one hdd fail on me and it was years old and i belive it was mainly to do with the PSU.
Does setting up a raid 0 config with 128k data strips make it MORE likely to fail than if otherwise?
Posted by: goranpaa
Hi dtr!
I think you should be very careful to use RAID 0 at all!
O.K. You win some loadtime for your games, but that will hardly be noticable.
And the risk on loosing data is double, to the single HDD setup.
I quoute an article I read on the net here:
...In addition, RAID 0 offers no redundancy & is more prone to data loss. If you are going to go the RAID route you should consider RAID 0+1, as it will add redundancy to your striped drives.
Reliability (as measured by mean time between failures (MTBF)) decreases linearly with the number of members—so a set of two disks is half as reliable as a single disk. The reason for this is that the file system is distributed across all disks. When a drive fails the file system cannot cope with such a large loss of data and coherency since the data is "striped" across all drives. Data can be recovered using special tools, however it will be incomplete and most likely corrupt."
If It is speed + "security" you are looking for, I think you would have been better off with a single W.D. Raptor setup.
Posted by: redwench
all drives die eventually. as goran said, in a raid array, you have double the chance of hardware failure. now, most will last through the warranty period, of course. but theres a rather significant chance that one of those drives will fail before youre ready  the array can also fail, separate from hardware. there are redundant raid configs, but there you essentially have a mirrored drive, without a performance increase. if an array fails for any reason, its quite likely youll lose everything on the drives.
raid arrays are generally only useful in very specific situations and are a devil to keep running properly. there is a reason they are not common in general usage. imho, its not worth the trouble for a personal computer. but if you feel the urge, make sure personal data is stored outside the array, and reserve the array for the OS and installable programs, including games.
as for some number crunching on performance, along with assorted opinions, http://www.atomicfire.net/modules.p...=showpage&pid=8
Posted by: dtr
Thank you VERY much for those replys!
So is it twice as unreliable due to the fact you are using 2 drives? As in if 1 fails they both fail, not the fact that using raid wears the disks out any quicker?
And when u say fail, i take it you mean you need a new hardrive.
I only ask this because i have been sent 2 sata hdd's instead of one :P
I cannot use raid 0+1 as i only have 2 drives and i trust u need at least 4 for that.
I have a 40gig ide drive i am going to use for storage e.g music etc.
Looking at the numbers games dont seem to improve so it looks like raid 0 is not worth the risk.
What do u propose i do, run raid 1? Does this decrease hdd life at all?
Also i would very much like to know the best way to partition your drives, e.g have windows and programs on a seperate partition etc? What sizes do u reccomend?
Thanks in advance sorry i sort of typed that while i was thinking
Posted by: goranpaa
If I where you, skip the Raid totally.
You have 2 great HDD:s! Use 1 of them for storing important stuff on for easy accsess.
On HDD 1, Make a 15 gig Partition for Windows, and then use the other partition for games etc.
And later on, you can do the same thing as I did , and get a 36 gig W.D. Raptor for the OS and games.
A thing I 'm glad I did, after have listened to Reds suggestion. Instead of setting up a S ATA RAID.
Posted by: redwench
afaik, raid configuration (or lack thereof) has no effect on the practical life of a drive. it might lower it slightly, but thats probably not going to be an issue. its possible to have an array failure unrelated to a hard drive failure.
if you are interested in raid 1, thats just using the second drive to mirror the first. you have data backup, but no extra space. not an efficient use of a drive for the normal user, but certainly quite handy if you have nothing better to do with the drive.
i think most people recommend partitioning a large drive into at least 2 partitions. one for the OS, assorted utility programs, and temp storage; the remainder for large programs and data. this is to allow for a format and reinstall of the OS without data loss. doesnt help if the drive fails, of course. just make sure your system partition is large enough to start with, its not a good idea to try to adjust partitions with files in them. 10g is a bit small, 20 should be more than sufficient for C, unless you have some unusually large files you want on there.
Posted by: dtr
Goodo then i wont use raid 
I dont quite understand what u said about how to use my space. U say make a 15gig partition for windows on one, i get that. But what about the other 105gig on that drive? use for games yes?
And the other hardrive use to store 'important' stuff on. Same with the 40gig ide, may aswell make use of it.
Thing is when u install software wont it automatically always choose the drive with windows on?
Posted by: goranpaa
Yes, use the other partition, for games and other programs you wanna install.
O.K. You will get a storage for important stuff big as China, I know. But only if you planning on using both Maxtor HDD:s at the same time?
Maybe the best thing would be just one of the Maxtors and the 40 gig?
And keep the other Maxtor as reserve. in its box.
(Appologize for my rather bad english, sometimes)
I just have small HDD:s. 2, 80 gig and this 36 gig Raptor.
Posted by: quiksilver87
As you saw in the numbers that red provided. Raid DOES NOT improve game performance by any means! It only might improve load times slightly! I also hear that raid 0 increases booting time by quite a bit...SO unless you use your HD a lot and use your pc for accessing files and stuff, i think raid 0 isnt worth the risk. What are your pc specs?
Posted by: dtr
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Maybe the best thing would be just one of the Maxtors and the 40 gig?
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Word to that mite be best idea for now.
My PC Specs are:
Chenbro Gaming Bomb
FSP BlueStorm 400w ATX 2.0
Asus A8N-SLI skt 939 nforce 4
AMD64 3000+
2 X 512 Geil Cas 2.5 Dual Channel
Gainward GF 6600GT Golden Sample PCI-e
Posted by: Zendu
Well to play devils advacate here.... Raid 0 makes load times very freakin quick, and transfer speeds (if say your moving around movie files) moderate (compaired to freakishly slow on non-raid). Granted by raiding them toghther you ARE doubling your chances of a hdd failure, but guess what? by buying a brand new harddrive you are too! Of cource with raid you lose all your data, compaired to half (or with my luck 3/4) As for boot time quiksilver, seeing as we have the exact same mobo, you will notice NO diffrence in boot time, as you have to wait through the raid drivers you arent using anyway. If anything i think it speeds up windows boot time, but not by much.
Alot of FAQs your going to read are going to look down on raid 0, however those faqs are written for buisnesses with 4+ hds anyway. Ill point out alienware makes most of thiers raided these days.
I think raid is really only usefull for image editing/archiving, so unless your opening very large .rar files, or moving huge ones around on your hd, its sort of overkill. An interesting point in terms of performance is that in addition to speeding up seek time (since each hd has to find half the data as usual) you also gain the benifit of stacking your disk cache.
You might find this interesting Toms hardware linky
As for difficult to maintain, 2 months ive run one defrag (which took 5ish minutes, not bad considering the 200 some gigs of data i have)
In closing, raid isnt neccisarly a devil, but you have to accept the risks to get the benifits. Seeing as how you allraedy have the hd's i would raid them, but please note if you want TRUE hd performance, you should get two High Seek SATA drives and raid them (muahaha...overkill)
Posted by: dtr
That is very interesting,
They say one disk failure and its all over, that doesnt mean both the hard drives are nakered though does it. And raid 0 doesnt make the physical drive wear any faster does it?
I am now just running one of my drives and the 40gig ide.
I dont notice alot of difference so far between sata and not.
basically if im using one drive, and that fails its game over anyway so whats the difference between running 2 in raid 0?
i mite have to re think my setup n do the dreaded format again, keep the suggestions coming.
EDIT: Oh by the way out of interest about the partitioning... at present i have 20gig for windows and small apps, and 100 for programs etc and then the other 40 for storage e.g music, videos.
But you say ppl do this so re installing windows is easier? If i were to re install windows on the 20gig partition isnt it true that none of my programs will function?
thanks
Posted by: goranpaa
Do you mean, the "Repair" type of Windows installation?
The only thing that goes down the bin is SP2 and updates + the Videodriver wich you must uninstall, if it is'nt WHQL.
Posted by: dtr
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i think most people recommend partitioning a large drive into at least 2 partitions. one for the OS, assorted utility programs, and temp storage; the remainder for large programs and data. this is to allow for a format and reinstall of the OS without data loss.
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That kind. Coz when installin programs dont some files go into the registry and windows etc?
So surely programs will not work?
By the way i just done a benchmark using sissandra for file system and i got 50mb/s on my Sata and 30mb/s on my ide.
the results seem 2 good compared to their comparison models.
Posted by: goranpaa
O.K. I missed that one!
Yes in that case they will be lost, just as you say.
But the " secret" is trying to aim the installation of all the programs that is'nt directly connected to Windows at the other partition.
But if you do a "Repair installation", you don't loose anything at all, except for servisce pac 2 and so on.
And then you, have the opportunity to install the RAID driver again, without having to sit for hours and reinstall your other programs.
You will find that everything else looks and works as you left it, the last time.
Posted by: dtr
o rite i see what u mean, although the majority or my programs are linked directly to windows, so after i format they wont be recognised.
Im still considering using raid 0 i just need a few ppl to answer the few questions on my previous post.
At the mo i have a spare drive so it makes sense?
just how likely is it the array fails and why would this happen?
Posted by: gmackay1
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just how likely is it the array fails and why would this happen?
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A few things could happen that I can think of:
1. Hard drive fails
2. A write error
3. Corruption
An example for a write error would be a bad bit/block/sector. Even if it successfully writes to the HD that bit can lose it's magnetic data in the future.
An example of corruption would be a misbehaving program writing to invalid memory locations or a bad hardware driver. Ever experience a lockup where the hard drive light stayed on continuously and you had to reboot? Could be it was writing just as the lockup occured.
These occurances are rare of course but do significantly increase the possibilities of failure.
Posted by: redwench
ok, assuming you have both drives full, you have 240 gig of stuff. in a raid, if theres an array failure of any kind, you have the fairly good likelihood of losing 240 gig of stuff. if you run them normally, whether windows implodes or a drive dies, youve lost at most 120gig. and data recovery is more likely on a standard setup as well.
your OS will automatically install basic registry keys for all data in other partitions and secondary drives. most games, for instance, will run just fine if you stick a drive in someone else's computer. other programs will, of course, be much more dependent on the OS. those will not work. firewalls, AV, etc will need to be installed regardless of where they are located. although saving programs isnt really an objective, its the data you dont want to lose.
any array will fail eventually, just like any other part of the computer. so the likelihood of faillure is 100%. the relevant question is how frequently is it likely to fail?
if you have a drive sitting around doing nothing, and will have no data of importance on your raid array, theres really no reason not to run in raid if youre willing to fool with it. but as im sure your research online has revealed, raid isnt designed for the type of usage that the vast majority of home computers see. its most relevant usage is in servers that have a lot of consistent data transfer. the occasional large loads or transfers the typical home user experiences doesnt justify the additional issues.
Posted by: dtr
Right i see what your saying.
As im using just one drive though, if that fails i'll lose 100% of my data anyway.
Whats the difference between a Raid Array failing and a single disk failing, as in time and likelyhood. Most of my data i want to keep will be keptout of the array anyhow, just windows and programs on the array.
Its made to sound like its going to fail in a matter of weeks.
I'm fairly happy with my setup at the moment anyway, its just knowing i have a spare drive and can get further permormance. Maybe i'll try it in the future if i ever need to format.
thanks
Posted by: redwench
while not normal, its not unheard of for people running an array to have to completely start over every few months. does that count as a matter of weeks? also, dont forget that data recovery from an OS crapout is fairly routine for your non-raid drives. the odds are that if your OS should fail, you can recover the majority of your data.
raid 0 only improves read and write times, no other benefits to it. unless you spend most of your time doing such things, about the only time youll notice it is when games are loading.
Quote:
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Whats the difference between a Raid Array failing and a single disk failing, as in time and likelyhood.
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well, the likelihood of a hard drive failure is twice as likely in a raid, of course. although thats not the primary method that an array fails. software failure is much more likely, and depends on your usage patterns.
Posted by: Andrew7689
Hello
Well, i use use raid 0 all the time now, since September last year, and it is still working ok, although i have had minor corruption with data, but that is very minor, like games i installed don't seem to install right first time round, like i have problems with Dungeon Siege, worked ok at first, but i downloaded the patch and the patch completely currupted the game, when i tried to run the game an error box came up and said game may be currupt or damaged, had to uninstall it and reinstall it, finally got it to work after a few attempts, and another game that did not like raid was Simcity 4, although Simcity 4 worked before putting expansion pack in, then the game did not work, had to try to install expansion pack again, this time it worked.
I have 2 raid 0 configs, one with two 80 gig harddisks, this is the windows xp operating disk, it is now 160 gig in size, and it is really fast on the internel Sata on the motherboard. When windows xp loads i only see the logo screen for about 5 seconds less, then 2 sec blank then wlecome screen, it all takes 20 seconds to load in and use computer.
Ok, my second raid setup is on a pci raid card, i have 2 hard disks connected to it, the size of them is 160 gig, in raid it is 320 gig. I have also done speed tests on it last year to find out the best cluster size, look at the chart below for this one, Also i can access both raid drives at the same time, like for example i can run scandisk on drive d: and run my virus scanner on drive c: at same time, i put all my games on drive D: at moment using about 100 gig of space.
And also my games do really load fast, like spellforce, on my friends pc, i have to wait about 2 mins to 3 mins on his, on mine it takes 25 seconds to load a game into spellforce from the game menu.
And before i did this i had more problems with single hard disk than Raid put together, but thats an observation. The problem with the single hard disk was programs crashed and windows did not close down right, all i have down is copyed that partition from the single harddisk to the raid drive, using a partition copy program, i had to re activate windows though, but my programs don't get upset as much now, don't know why, but happy, i have not sp2 though, tried it once and uninstalled it, 50 percent of my games did not work, and my virus scanner would not work at all in xp2, and i hated the logo, looked a bit bare.
Drive D: Benchmark using SIsoftware Sandra 2005 - using 1 gig of various sizes of files just copied from C: each time i had to reformat the drive using different cluster size.
Cluster Index Buff Read Seg Read Ran Read Buff Write Seq Write Ran Write
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1k 84 M 81 M 108 M 49 M 89 M 89 M 69 M
2K 87 M 77 M 112 M 50 M 94 M 94 M 69 M
4K 89 M 75 M 117 M 50 M 98 M 97 M 70 M
8K 89 M 84 M 117 M 48 M 99 M 99 M 68 M
16K 89 M 88 M 117 M 48 M 100 M 100 M 66 M
32K 90 M 88 M 118 M 49 M 100 M 100 M 67 M
64K 90 M 86 M 118 M 50 M 99 M 100 M 68 M
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Ok that was done on drive d: through a pci raid card using 2 160 gig sata harddisks 7200 rpm. The raid card was ACARD 6890. I now have it at the 64k setting, and it has only lost it raid config once, all i had to do was go into the raid card utility bios and reinstall the boot block, this does not get rid of the data on the hard disk.
Ok, i am going to run a benchmark on drive c: now, i will post the results later.
I hope you enjoyed this insite into raid 0, i like raid 0 now, so fast, also i have a separate usb had disk i use for backup purposes, but never needed to retrieve data from it yet, fingers crossed though, my system should be ok for another year, since i have had this xp installed for a year now, although transferred to another hard disk, COOL.
Bye for now
Regards
Andrew
Posted by: Andrew7689
Hello
Here is the text in ASCII format, just download it and unpack it, view in notepad.
Since after posting other did not leave spaces in the chart i put on.
Regards
Andrew
Posted by: dtr
hey thanks for that man,
so are you saying you had a single hdd then copied the data image to a second and ran raid?
Is it safe to do that?
Posted by: Andrew7689
Hello
Yes, once you have set up the raid in the controller card, then the 2 harddisks act as one drive, all you need to do is then format the drive either using fdisk, or partition magic, then use something like a program called drive copy, or you could just use partition magic, all you have to do is have the existing hard disk in computer, and boot partition magic, select one menu in partition magic, to copy drive, this then makes an identical copy of the partition on your new harddisk, this process could take a few hours to do depending on the size of the drive, my existing hard disk was 40 gig ata 100, and the new raid is 160 gig, 2 harddisk at 80 gig each, after copying the partition onto the new drive it is still 40 gig in size, then you have to expand that partition into the 160 gig, you can do this in partition magic, the raid drive is treat like a normal harddisk, even though it is 2 times faster and 2 times bigger.
And that is how i did it.
Regards
Andrew
Posted by: Andrew7689
Hello
I would like to add, i used partition magic 8 to do this.
Regards
Andrew
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