2TB in RAID 0? Not so fast.

4745454b

Titan
Moderator
Damn. I just read that article and wanted to post it for all the AID0 lovers here. A quote if I may from the article. (page 9, second paragraph.)

RAID 0 sounds impressive in a system configuration and provides a performance placebo effect when viewing synthetic benchmarks. However, RAID 0 is just not worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer, especially with the software RAID capabilities included on most motherboards. We will delve into the RAID world with additional tests and hardware combinations in the coming weeks but for now we again recommend that most desktop users should just stay away from it.

Got it? Yes, AID0 is faster. The tests with AID0 finished 1-2 seconds faster then a non raid system. The problem for gamers is that the cost of the second drive would provide better benefits if it was put into a better CPU, GPU, ram, etc.
 

RichPLS

Champion
yet with teh low price of HDs, and the facts that faster is still faster... RAID0 still has its place in the enthusiast PC... not to mention that they are still nonetheless, quite reliable...
I have 6 HDs in my PC.
 

cb62fcni

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Right, but also with the sizes of the drives sprialing upward, backup becomes an issue. In all but a few cases, I would call it an unwarranted cost. Unless everything else in your computer is maxxed out, the money spent on a RAID0 array would yield much better results if spent on other components.
 

rammedstein

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lol, not really, you get 4 cheap ass 80gb drives, say, $50 each, put them in raid 0, they perform better than a raptor, store more and are cheaper.
 

Mobius

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RAID 0 is bullshit from start to finish on the desktop. You've got to be a fucking idiot to implement it.

RAID 1 - sure - but 0 is a worthless piece of crap which will cause you to curse the day you decided to go with it.

You've been warned.
 

RJ

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RAID 0 is bullshit from start to finish on the desktop. You've got to be a ****** idiot to implement it.

RAID 1 - sure - but 0 is a worthless piece of crap which will cause you to curse the day you decided to go with it.

You've been warned.

So I'm an idiot because YOU say so? 8O... LMAO :lol:
 

cb62fcni

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I'll give you the PCMark05 benchmark, but I've never seen faster winxp startup from RAID0. My home system has two 160GB WDAAJS's in RAID0, and my gaming computer has a single 74GB ADFD raptor, and the raptor boots faster. The home system has a 6600, and the gaming system has a D805@3.8 (I know, time to upgrade the gaming machine). Both have 2Gb RAM. The Raptor system is noticibly faster, 3-4 seconds at least, never used a stop watch on it though.

That's the greatest thing about the new Hitatchi drive, not only is it hugemongous, it's damn fast too. Cheers to them for not sacrificing speed for capacity and actually delivering both. Sure, not everyone has a need for such a big drive, but I'm sure most people could find a use for it. Especially for HTPC's or, well, huge chunks of the stuff the internet is REALLY for.....
 

No1sFanboy

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RAID 0 is bullshit from start to finish on the desktop. You've got to be a ****** idiot to implement it.

RAID 1 - sure - but 0 is a worthless piece of crap which will cause you to curse the day you decided to go with it.

You've been warned.

So I'm an idiot because YOU say so? 8O... LMAO :lol:

Count me in with idiots. You can buy a fast proc, overclock, tune your memory but if you try to find more speed in the slowest part of your system you're an idiot.

but for now we again recommend that most desktop users should just stay away from it.

Most desktop users shouldn't overclock, most shouldn't water cool, most shouldn't buy fast ram etc., etc. I don't think many reading these forums are the average user.
 

4745454b

Titan
Moderator
AID0 is pretty much the LAST thing you should get for a build. Go look in the forum for people asking for build advice. Watch them talk about buying 2 harddrives, but only a 7900GS. They want to get AID0 up instead of buying the 6600 instead of the 6300. AID0 is what you buy when you're done building your system, quad core cpu, SLI/CF graphics, 2GB+ of high performance memory, etc. Once you have all that in your rig, then consider AID0. As long as someone is talking about buying a 7600GT/7900GS, I'm going to tell them to drop the AID0 idea.
 

cb62fcni

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I agree absolutely. Too many skimp on other, more critical components in favor of putting in an array that's not going to be noticibly faster in 95% of apps. Not only that, but when used as a system drive it's an invitation to disaster, unless you do 0+1, which is even more money.

If you've maxxed everything else out, then why not use it? It's not really going to hurt, but a gain of 1 or 2% isn't worth much in my book.
 

vic20

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RAID 0 is bullshit from start to finish on the desktop. You've got to be a ****** idiot to implement it.

RAID 1 - sure - but 0 is a worthless piece of crap which will cause you to curse the day you decided to go with it.

You've been warned.

Gimme a break. I've been exclusively using stripes since you could hack a promise ata66 card to a fasttrack.

Used Promise FT 66, FT 100, FT 133, Intel ICH 5/7R, Various Silicon Image ATA and Sata Controllers, nForce 4, and now I'm using a ULi M1575.

I've never lost any data or drives. Never had to rebuild a stripe or copy data back from my backup drives.

Wah Wah :( I had a bad experience once. Get over it
 

No1sFanboy

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AID0 is pretty much the LAST thing you should get for a build. Go look in the forum for people asking for build advice. Watch them talk about buying 2 hard drives, but only a 7900GS. They want to get AID0 up instead of buying the 6600 instead of the 6300. AID0 is what you buy when you're done building your system, quad core cpu, SLI/CF graphics, 2GB+ of high performance memory, etc. Once you have all that in your rig, then consider AID0. As long as someone is talking about buying a 7600GT/7900GS, I'm going to tell them to drop the AID0 idea.

I mostly agree with you here. Upgrades should be planned with a balanced approach.
I first became interested in Raid because of online gaming; specifically the BF series. I remember joining the game and only to see the planes and tanks roll out of the base. When BF2 came out the load times were huge. For a gamer you cannot underestimate the advantage 1-2 sec. in load time can give you. Anandtech did BF2 load time and typically showed a 1 sec. advantage. They tested offline load time which is must faster than online. Online does a client verification which is all hard drive access. In my experience being on TS comparing load time with other players, two decent hard drives in raid 0 are only beaten by two raptors. I don't play BF any more but in the hundreds of hours I played, Raid 0 gave me an unfair advantage. I would be in the air and across the map before 2/3rds of the players had joined.
That explains why I started using raid 0. I also feel that everything feels quicker but this is harder to prove or quantify. I hate load bars and hour glasses.
 

vic20

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AID0 is pretty much the LAST thing you should get for a build. Go look in the forum for people asking for build advice. Watch them talk about buying 2 hard drives, but only a 7900GS. They want to get AID0 up instead of buying the 6600 instead of the 6300. AID0 is what you buy when you're done building your system, quad core cpu, SLI/CF graphics, 2GB+ of high performance memory, etc. Once you have all that in your rig, then consider AID0. As long as someone is talking about buying a 7600GT/7900GS, I'm going to tell them to drop the AID0 idea.

I mostly agree with you here. Upgrades should be planned with a balanced approach.
I first became interested in Raid because of online gaming; specifically the BF series. I remember joining the game and only to see the planes and tanks roll out of the base. When BF2 came out the load times were huge. For a gamer you cannot underestimate the advantage 1-2 sec. in load time can give you. Anandtech did BF2 load time and typically showed a 1 sec. advantage. They tested offline load time which is must faster than online. Online does a client verification which is all hard drive access. In my experience being on TS comparing load time with other players, two decent hard drives in raid 0 are only beaten by two raptors. I don't play BF any more but in the hundreds of hours I played, Raid 0 gave me an unfair advantage. I would be in the air and across the map before 2/3rds of the players had joined.
That explains why I started using raid 0. I also feel that everything feels quicker but this is harder to prove or quantify. I hate load bars and hour glasses.

word 8)
 

Casper42

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RAID 0 is bullshit from start to finish on the desktop. You've got to be a ****** idiot to implement it.

RAID 1 - sure - but 0 is a worthless piece of crap which will cause you to curse the day you decided to go with it.

You've been warned.

What an insightful, well explained post.

what a tool.

Like one of the others I use a RAID0 setup and have on my last 2 machines and its definatrly faster.


IMHO the best config for a single PC would be:
2 x 150GB Raptor - RAID0 - Windows/Games/Apps ( C: )
2 x 1TB or 750GB - RAID1 - Backup of C: and Data Storage ( D: )

Almost every new mobo out there will do 4 drives and will do RAID 1 and 0, both require the least amount of CPU Cycles as well.
You Ghost (or whatever) your 300GB array over to the Backup/Storage Volume on a semi regular basis and you dont need to worry about the inherant pitfalls in RAID0.



PS: Something else to consider is RAID1, when done with a GOOD RAID Controller, will often distribute reads. Meaning Reads are done like RAID0 and Writes are done like RAID1. I'm not sure if most cheapo "onboard RAID" controllers do it this way or not. But for most gamers, your doing 95% read anyway. You still only get 1/2 your total storage but your reads should be faster. So you get the best of both worlds.
 

bharkol1

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The risk to gain ratio for RAID 0 is a bit tilted towards being risky. If you are going to do this then don't boot to it so that if it fails you don't have to rebuild everything. for people looking for fast i recommend RAID 10, 4 drives RAID 0, RAID 1 used together so you get a stripped mirror. I still think for the gain of raid 0 it isn't really worth it unless you are serving high I/O, game load times don't seem to change much. Don't get me wrong there is a qualitative gain but not much that can be measured. The other approach is raid 5 with 3 drives. raid 5 should give the fastest loading times but depending on the card writes can slow down due to figuring out the parity bit. when it comes to RAID 5 the more drives the faster the RAID because i/o is spread out. you have to watch out for hotspots with cheap raid controllers though.
 

Dudeson

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why would you want that much hard drive space anyway? my school has 2tb on their main server for all the school computers. it takes the school the ENTIRE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS (8weeks in Aust.) to defrag!!! THATS INSANE!
 

cb62fcni

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These HDD's are likely much faster than what your school uses for its servers, even completely full I'd estimate about 6 hours for a moderately fragged drive.
 

rushfan

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RAID 0 is bullshit from start to finish on the desktop. You've got to be a ****** idiot to implement it.

RAID 1 - sure - but 0 is a worthless piece of crap which will cause you to curse the day you decided to go with it.

You've been warned.

Gimme a break. I've been exclusively using stripes since you could hack a promise ata66 card to a fasttrack.

Used Promise FT 66, FT 100, FT 133, Intel ICH 5/7R, Various Silicon Image ATA and Sata Controllers, nForce 4, and now I'm using a ULi M1575.

I've never lost any data or drives. Never had to rebuild a stripe or copy data back from my backup drives.

Wah Wah :( I had a bad experience once. Get over it

I still have one of those hacked FT 66 cards in one of my old computers. That was a cool mod. 8)

I've been using RAID 0 for seven or eight years without any major problems. I have had drives fail, bringing down the array, but I have solid backups to turn to and Acronis images to rebuild boot partitions with. It's a pain in the a** to replace a dead drive regardless of how it was used or what was on it.

Experienced users know to make good backups, frequently. Even RAID 1 isn't going to help you if you delete a file by mistake. RAID 0 is faster in some situations so if you know what you're doing, it can be a benefit.