Raid 0 vs raptor

[carboncallate]

hi people from tom´s hardware, the best hardware site

I have some question about raid, and I hope you can help me with them

1) is raid 0 better than a raptor 10k rpm drive?

2) all info about raid 0 state that raid 0 can have problems with security (I mean, when one hd fails, the whole system fails). but my question is, is this problem given by the fact that statistically speaking is more likely that one drive fails because I have 2 drivers? or the fact that I am using raid 0 adds error posibility to the formula? (what I mean is if the error is the same error of me having 2 hard drives non raid but taking as a bad result if one of them fails, or by working in raid, because of the way raid works, can add more error)

3) the difference in raid 0 between software raid and hard drive raid is a lot? in % how much would it be?


thank you very much

 

[r_manic]

The first question you need to ask yourself is, what do you need above average hard disk speed for? Do you want your OS to load more quickly? Do you want faster game loading times? Do you need the faster read/write speeds for professional use, such as video editing?

Answering that question will help you weigh the advantages of either setup with each other. In the case of the Raptor, you've got better reliability, but lower capacities. RAID 0 is of course faster, but like you said, less reliable.

 

[ToreTrygg]

The 1 and 2 question is depend on what do you need it for. Performance or Business Continuity? If you need performance than use raid 0, if second one then I'll suggest you the other way.

 

[carboncallate]

hi thank you for your answer


I will use it mostly for games, and well, is always good to have a faster os boot


thank you again

 

[usmetallist]

hi people from tom´s hardware, the best hardware site

I have some question about raid, and I hope you can help me with them

1) is raid 0 better than a raptor 10k rpm drive?
My pair of raptop 74GB 10,000 rpm still give a quite decent "flatline "Transfer rates thruout the whole set. Samsung's F1 single disks have supposable faster transfer rate but it slows down as the get closer to the center (smaller radius) of the disk.

If you need consistent TRANSFER RATES, lower access times, and can afford the additional cost,power consumption and space inside the case RAID0 is better choice.


2) all info about raid 0 state that raid 0 can have problems with security (I mean, when one hd fails, the whole system fails). but my question is, is this problem given by the fact that statistically speaking is more likely that one drive fails because I have 2 drivers? or the fact that I am using raid 0 adds error posibility to the formula? (what I mean is if the error is the same error of me having 2 hard drives non raid but taking as a bad result if one of them fails, or by working in raid, because of the way raid works, can add more error)

MUST USE !!! Combo Heatsink/Fan HDD coolers... especially on a RAID0 set HDDs.
I am using these on all my HDDs since ~7-8yrs ...when my USCSI 9GB MicroPolis 10,000 failed

HDD Heatsink/Fan will extend HDD life way beyond OEM specs. It will be outdated way before you start getting bad sectors.

3) the difference in raid 0 between software raid and hard drive raid is a lot? in % how much would it be?

Software RAID is for p*ssies. If you are going to do RAID do it only in Hardware. My guess is that at a min Software RAID0 will give you 10% CPU penalty


thank you very much

 

[usmetallist]

I am pondering on the idea if
--a pair of SATA-to-CF adapters with
--a pair of SanDisk CompactFlash (Extreme Pro)90MB/sec

will do a decent RAID0 setup .... with any build-in MoBo RAID controller

16GB Extreme Pro CF sells for ~$160-$180 on ebay.
CF-to-SATA ~$6pc/ebay

its will cost more then pair of 74GB raptors way-back-when....

 

[sminlal]

I will use it mostly for games, and well, is always good to have a faster os boot

Aside from making the game faster to load, most games won't actually run faster with faster disk. The biggest reason disk performance might matter in a game is if you don't have enough RAM to hold all of the game in memory, and in that case you're better off buying more RAM than trying to make the disk faster.

For faster boots and overall improvements in application startup times, what you want is a disk subsystem with faster access times - this results in more random I/Os per second. In that case a 10K drive will give you better results than two 7.2K drives in a RAID 0 set.

But whereas a 10K drive might have an access time that's, say, 1.5 to 2X faster than a standard hard drive, an SSD has an access time that's about 100X faster. You pay more for an SSD, but you get WAY more performance per dollar than with any mechanical hard drive.

 

[geofelt]

There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
There are some specific applications that will benefit, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

Raid-0 adds in the raid controller as an additional point of failure.
I would not be overly worried about raid-0 failure, you DO have external backup don't you?

Raid-0 shows high sequential data transfer rates, but that will only show up for large blocks of data which you will typically not see in a game, or the OS.

Yes, the discrete raidcards WITH a hardware processor, a large cache, and bettery backup can improve speed. They are expensive enough that a good SSD might be cheaper.

 

[usmetallist]

for gaming it is not signification except at gmaeload. the most-signification use for RAID0 is VIDEO-EDITING

 

[davidmp]

Not only do you have to be aware of a drive going bad and losing your data but it the MB goes bad as in my case there is no way I have found to read the drives! I have started to setup a new system and have a question on drives as well. I started with a 300 GB VelociRaptor SATA II for my main drive and now I am thinking it might be better to get an SSD drive for main OS, Office and Application drive and use 300 drive for games and data storage. Does this sound plausable and even worth doing? Thanks

 

[goobaah]

It seems these days that drive failure is more common too. Reminds me of the IBM GXP14 days. That was the beginning of the downfall of IBM disks. My drive survived, lots of others didn't. The only way to see really noticeable boot times decrease and application load is SSD. I'll jump in on that when I can get enough space for my apps and not sell a kidney on the black market to pay for it. I'm not sure about the video editing raid 0 idea though. Isnt HD 1080 bitrate much slower than a single 7200 rpm drive. I know compressed is max ~40 Mbit for blu ray. I dont know what that would be uncompressed, but I also dont know any way to record HD uncompressed either. Maybe compressing 3D rendered frames. ??

 

[spoofedpacket]

It seems these days that drive failure is more common too.

Yes, this is what happens when people run out and get the cheapest, most unproven desktop hard drives and stick them in arrays. They moan and groan about how expensive a SSD is, but at the same time will often waste days of their lives chasing SATA timeouts, RAID failures, etc because they were too cheap to even invest into a RAID controller with a battery backed write cache. Garbage in, garbage out, I think is the rule.

I fell into this category in the past. When Raptors first hit the market, I bought two of them, then installed and setup just like the review on Tom's. It was awesome for a few months, but then I had two drives die in three years, had to reinstall Windows XP probably five times due to power outages, kids pressing reset on my computer while the RAID was being accessed, etc, you name it, it'll kill a RAID0.

At this point, I will not consider using any type of RAID unless I've got a proven RAID controller, battery backed write cache, and proper SAS or "RAID Edition" SATA drives. Anything less and it will have too much a chance of ending in frustration.

 

[sminlal]

^ Well said, spoofed!

 

[usmetallist]

I splurge only on HDDs.....
anytakes on making 2xCF RAID(with Sata-to-CF controllers) with Mobo RAID


now I am pondering on A-data's SX95 Read up to 230MB/s, Write up to 180MB/s
SATA2 will be the bottleneck if ran this in RAID0 pair

http://oc.adata.com.tw/1_product_detail.asp?pid=ASX95SMAL-2

 

[spoofedpacket]

I splurge only on HDDs.....
anytakes on making 2xCF RAID(with Sata-to-CF controllers) with Mobo RAID

Sure, a couple of things..

Really, why bother with RAID0 on SSD for a desktop? You are going to that a hit on your CPU from having to handle the RAID with an onboard controller. As far as noticable gain, you probably won't see a big difference unless you are doing some pretty extensive I/O that gaming, encoding, web browsing will never reach. Also, you aren't going to get TRIM support with SSDs in an array, so your write performance will deteriorate over time. Sure, ATTO scores will look great, but you have to remember the articles on this site (and many others) always focus on the part they are testing and not how it impacts the day-to-day real world usage of a gamer or business person.

I also wouldn't go with some random brand. The big brands, like Intel, aren't immune to problems like the recent Win7 + SSD firmware troubles, but do you trust a smaller company to issue firmware fixes, updates, and accept a RMA if it breaks without trouble? For instance, the installed user base of the linked drive will likely be so small, if they did release a firmware that just destroys the drive under a certain set of factors, it'll take longer to find out about and likely much longer for them to release a fix. Is there much documentation on how well the wear-leveling works since this is a make-or-break situation (literally) for the drive nearing the end of it's short two-year warranty?

So no, I wouldn't do it. Get something proven, or at least something with a part number coming back with matches under Google Shopping. Marketing phrases like "killer" are kind of a turn off, as well. Too many of these things spring up on the market and people go nuts for no good reason except raw benchmarks. Take a look at the recent Tom's articles on PCIe based SSDs. People get excited but don't understand the card's drivers consume gigabytes of RAM in some cases, leading to fast storage but a choke on the CPU and memory from having to deal with hardware designed around a benchmark and not balanced for real world usage or longevity/stability of a solution.

Also, SATA2 won't be a bottleneck any more than running a single drive without RAID. The controller's bandwidth is handled on a per-port basis. If you have four drives, you have four SATA2 ports worth of bandwidth available (assuming the chipset behind those ports can actually keep up).

 

[sminlal]

You are going to that a hit on your CPU from having to handle the RAID with an onboard controller.

I agree with your comments in general, but I just want to point out that for RAID 0 this particular statement is untrue. RAID 0 simply alternates groups of blocks between two drives. There's no MORE I/O, no parity calculations, nothing extra for the CPU to do over and above a single drive other than to choose WHICH disk to read or write to. And that's literally as easy as dividing the block number by the stripe size and seeing if the result is odd or even - a totally trivial task which is completely insignificant compared to all of the other work done by the application, file system and device driver stack.