RAID 0, 1, 0+1 or 5?

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AshyN

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For a guy with "

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
MSI K8N Diamond Plus
eVGA Geforce 7900GTX
FSP Group FX700-GLN 700W
4 x CORSAIR XMS 1GB DDR 400
4 x WD Caviar SE16 250GB 7200 RPM SATA II
2 x ViewSonic VX922 19" 2ms
Thermaltake Big Typhoon
Arctic Silver 5 "

this configuration, he aint need no budget.
I am sure he will be more than happy if he gets what he wants regardless of budget. 8)
 

michaelahess

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I don't think a single scsi will outdo a properly setup raid0 with 4 drives. Also, there is no prob running current gen drives 24/7/365, I have over 25 drives at home that run constant with no problems.

My scsi array at home is slower than my dual samys in raid0, and slower than my 4 wd 320's in raid5. Granted it's only running on a 160 capable card, but they are all 10k's. It'll woop ass on i/o but that's irrelivant for this application.
 

AshyN

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Boy... You need someone to fix your setup. You are in need of an Expert...

SCSI run twice as fast as SATA.. and it does deliver better results than 4 HDD SATA RAID 0. And the ease of setting up and maintainance will outdo that of SATA. However, I love SATA too.. and sometimes, the RPM can misguide you.. and if you are using 160 controller.. boy.. you need an upgrade too.. :roll:
 

AshyN

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I don't think a single scsi will outdo a properly setup raid0 with 4 drives. Also, there is no prob running current gen drives 24/7/365, I have over 25 drives at home that run constant with no problems.

My scsi array at home is slower than my dual samys in raid0, and slower than my 4 wd 320's in raid5. Granted it's only running on a 160 capable card, but they are all 10k's. It'll woop ass on i/o but that's irrelivant for this application.

See for yourself.

image009.gif
 

rickpcnerd

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Choose the one fits your needs.

Advantages & characteristics

RAID Level 0 requires a minimum of 2 drives to implement

RAID 0 implements a striped disk array, the data is broken down into blocks and each block is written to a separate disk drive
I/O performance is greatly improved by spreading the I/O load across many channels and drives

Best performance is achieved when data is striped across multiple controllers with only one drive per controller

No parity calculation overhead is involved

Very simple design

Easy to implement

[
b]Disadvantages[/b]

Not a "True" RAID because it is NOT fault-tolerant

The failure of just one drive will result in all data in an array being lost

Should never be used in mission critical environments

Recommended Applications


Video Production and Editing

Image Editing

Pre-Press Applications

Any application requiring high bandwidth



Advantages & characteristics

Raid 1- RAID Level 1 requires a minimum of 2 drives to implement

One Write or two Reads possible per mirrored pair

Twice the Read transaction rate of single disks, same Write transaction rate as single disks

100% redundancy of data means no rebuild is necessary in case of a disk failure, just a copy to the replacement disk

b]Disadvantages[/b]

Highest disk overhead of all RAID types (100%) - inefficient

Typically the RAID function is done by system software, loading the CPU/Server and possibly degrading throughput at high activity levels. Hardware implementation is strongly recommended

May not support hot swap of failed disk when implemented in "software"


Recommended Applications


Accounting

Payroll

Financial

Any application requiring very high availability




Raid 5

Each entire data block is written on a data disk; parity for blocks in the same rank is generated on Writes, recorded in a distributed location and checked on Reads.

RAID Level 5 requires a minimum of 3 drives to implement

Advantages & characteristics

Highest Read data transaction rate

Medium Write data transaction rate

Low ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data disks means high efficiency

Good aggregate transfer rate

b]Disadvantages[/b]

Disk failure has a medium impact on throughput

Most complex controller design

Difficult to rebuild in the event of a disk failure (as compared to RAID level 1)

individual block data transfer rate same as single disk


Recommended Applications


File and Application servers

Database servers

Web, E-mail, and News servers

Intranet servers

Most versatile RAID level


Raid 0 + 1


RAID Level 0+1 requires a minimum of 4 drives to implement

Advantages & characteristics

RAID 0+1 is implemented as a mirrored array whose segments are RAID 0 arrays

RAID 0+1 has the same fault tolerance as RAID level 5


RAID 0+1 has the same overhead for fault-tolerance as mirroring alone


High I/O rates are achieved thanks to multiple stripe segments

Excellent solution for sites that need high performance but are not concerned with achieving maximum reliability

Disadvantage


RAID 0+1 is NOT to be confused with RAID 10. A single drive failure will cause the whole array to become, in essence, a RAID Level 0 array

Very expensive / High overhead

All drives must move in parallel to proper track lowering sustained performance

Very limited scalability at a very high inherent cost


Recommended Applications


Imaging applications

General fileserver



Hope this help u out.


From the Hard Drive Expert
 
For gaming, a RAID "0" array will shave off a mere 3-4 seconds off of game level load times, and you are still waiting for a typical 25 seconds, as opposed to 29-30 seconds...

(For first person shooters, what good is done by being first into the level with no one to shoot anyway? :) )

If your mainboard supports 0+1 (or better yet, RAID 5) and you have enough drives to support it, then there is no reason not to use it....; if anything, at least you will gain WinXP/ RAID experience! :)
 

AshyN

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I think we've made the guy really confused. I guess... he would have decided to give his HDDs to those who need it and planned to stop setting up the PC. :lol:
 

michaelahess

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Granted I am running some older gen stuff. I do have to disagree with "ease of setup" unless you use backplanes, setup of id's and such is certainly not as easy as plugging in a sata cable. And exactly what maintenance are you talking of?

Oh and I am an expert, I setup scsi raid servers quite regularly. I don't benchmark them for games however since they aren't used for that. So yeah, maybe I should get some 320 stuff and check it out at home, but it's not worth it. Your example is I/O for sata, so what? That has almost nothing to do with a gaming environment, and I already said scsi will outdo sata in I/O. Why show that graph?

Sorry to get defensive, I just don't think the cost of scsi is worth the performance for even the highest end gaming system. High end SCSI controllers cost a fortune compared to anything else and the HD's are certainly more expensive. And if you don't have pci-x for the scsi controller, your throughput will be crap with any high end scsi controller anyway.