RAID 0 or Not?

[reidthaler]

As with my current mobo, my next mobo, the Asus P5Q Pro, will have RAID, but I haven't used it. It just seemed to be one more complicated thing to have to set up and manage.

I do want to look into RAID 0 and see what the benefits and trade offs would be and have these questions:

I don't want to buy a ton of drives for RAID 5 as I want to keep my costs down and my system quiet, which means not stuffing it with a lot of heat generators. I know RAID 0 doesn't offer security, so I've been self warned. Is there much of a performance increase with RAID 0 over a non RAID HD for Photoshop and Lightroom--no gaming though? What percentage?

If I only have my OS and Apps on the RAID, and not data, would I still be gaining much?

How does RAID work with partitions? Can one partition be part of a RAID and not another?

Do the drives have to be identical hard drives in RAID 0, or just same speed and cache?

Can I make a drive image of a RAID 0 OS with Acronis True Image the way I do now? Currently I have 2 hdds (ok, 3 which is use for a page file). The second is a mirror of the first. Each drive has 2 partitions, 1) OS and apps, and 2) data and software. I create a drive image of the OS and store it on the second data partition, which is backed daily is backed up daily with Syncback SE. I also keep an external HD stored off site at work that I try to bring home 2x a month for data and software.

I shoot with a Nikon D200 and have a P4 3.0 2 GB RAM. Maybe just the upgrade to a quad core and more RAM would be enough?

Thoughts? Suggestions?



Thanks!

Reid

 

[Hovaucf]

RAID 0 = mb/s (n x media rate per disk); same goes for random reads (typical access)

you can test the media rate of one disk with HDTack or HDTune and then multiply that for the best ever possible performance, but I would not expect it in reality to be quite as high but close enough as you will be using onboard RAID.

R5 require 3 drives minimum so keep that in mind, R10 requires 4 but is faster than R5 as it doesnt have to calculate parity and with onboard RAID, R5 is awful, perhaps the same for R10.

You can partition your raid however you like, to the computer a RAID is no different than a single disk, and thats the whole point.

You should always use identical drives and firmware.

I dont use acronis so I could not answer those questions.

 

[reidthaler]

Thanks!

Reid