Raid 5 with 5 HDD's?

[Mal Pherian]

So... If I buy 4 1tb Drives, and 1 4tb Drive, could I set these up in a raid 5 configuration (with the 4 1tb drives as raid 0 and the 4tb drive as the redundancy drive?

OR... If not...

What is the best configuration for a 6 drive comp with the 6th drive being an SSD for the boot OS only and the other 5 drives being for Data/Storage.

Note: this is for a high end gaming rig.

 

[13thmonkey]

the redundancy is spread around. so no you can't. you could do 5x1TB, you could do 4x1TB + 1x4TB for backups. 'high end gaming rig' i'd do 1x2TB + 1x3TB for backups.

 

[Traciatim]

6 drives... I would probably do an SSD boot drive, 2 drives in a RAID0 for sheer speed, and then 3 drives in a RAID5 for safety and storage.

Personally, I wouldn't RAID them at all and just spend the money on a larger SSD and one or two spinning disks for storage and backups. It would be far simpler and easier to maintain.

 

[rforce]

As was mentioned, RAID 5 parity is spread across all the drives in the RAID array. I'd say that in your case, I'd go with the 1SSD for OS and applications and setup 5 x 1TB in RAID 5 for your Data/Storage and then think about a backup solution. A backup is a second copy of a file, not the only copy of the file. It is not wise to have a backup volume in the same system where the original copies are stored. If your computer gets stolen, damaged in fire, struck by lightening, etc, you don't want your backups to be gone too.

 

[McHenryB]

could I set these up in a raid 5 configuration (with the 4 1tb drives as raid 0 and the 4tb drive as the redundancy drive?

You are confusing RAID levels. RAID 0 and RAID 5 are completely different.

What are you trying to achieve by using RAID? About the only advantage it offers is 24/7 operation without having to take the computer off-line (that assumes that you are using a proper stand-alone RAID card - expensive - and not the Micky Mouse RAID provided on some motherboards; actually the best solution nowadays is some sort of software RAID, assuming that your OS supports it). That's important in enterprises, but not a necessity for home computers.

So - are you using proper hardware RAID, fake RAID built in to m/b (no, no, no!) or software RAID. What operating system are you running and what filesystem do you plan to use. And, as already asked, what are you hoping to achieve by the use of RAID?

 

[boosted1g]

You seem to be confused about RAID array configurations.

Raid 5 = 4+ drives of equal size. The parity data is equally spread around each drive. If you are not familiar with parity, what it does is it uses XOR to calculate a value for the combined data of that exact bit on every drive; in the event of a failure it can then take that calculated value and work backwards to figure out what the data was on the corrupted drive. You could use your 4tb disk but your system would ignore any storage space above the smallest drive; so in your situation it would only use 1tb of the drive and thus ignore the other 3 TB.


For your drive configuration what you should be doing is RAID 0+1. You put your 4x1tb drive in RAID 0 (1 large drive with increased read/write speed) and that will pool the drives together to be a 4tb drive. Then do RAID 1 (a mirror) of that 4tb RAID array onto your other drive.


Now with all of that said. I hope you do realize that RAID array is not the same as a backup. With the RAID 5 or RAID 0+1 you are protected against a hard drive failure. What you are not protected against is deletion/corruption of the file, as a RAID array will just have a copy of the same corrupted file.

If you would tell us what you planned on storing on the drives we can tell you what would truly be the best arrangement of your drives.

 

[geofelt]

You have two issues:
1. Protection against failure.
2. Performance in a gaming system.

1. Re: protection.
The value of raid-1 and it's variants like raid-5 is that you can recover from a drive failure quickly. It is for servers that can not tolerate any interruption.
Modern hard drives have a advertised mean time to failure on the order of 500,000+ hours. That is something like 50 years. SSD's are similar.
With raid-1 you are protecting yourself from specifically a hard drive failure. Not from other failures such as viruses, operator error,
malware,raid controller failure fire, theft, etc.
For that, you need external backup. If you have external backup, and can tolerate some recovery time, you do not need raid-1 or raid-5.

2. Performance.
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.
Forget raid-0. And, raid-0 exposes you to an added point of failure, the motherboard and the raid hardware.

From a performance point of view, nothing beats a SSD.
If you can afford a sufficiently large SSD like a 1tb Samsung 850, use that for your os and apps.
Use a hard drive for storage of large files such as videos.
Using raid 0,1, or 5 will hurt performance because more data needs to be written.

And, consider the source, but Samsung claims that a ssd can actually help FPS:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/why/forGamer.html

 

[Mal Pherian]

I currently am using 1 SSD for the Boot drive/OS, and 2 1tb drives set up in a raid 0 using the Win 7 Pro Disk management wizard. I have them set in a raid 0 mainly for storage spread across the 2 drives, so that I can access the data drive and have all downloads etc automatically stored on that drive directory, and accessed via the desktop (Located on the SSD) and drawn from the Raid 0 HDDs.

I am not using a raid card, and my Bios has all drives set to ACHI.

It runs perfectly.

I am building a larger, high end gaming desktop, and want to set a similar system up for it maxing out it's drive bays etc... just because mainly. I'm not really worried so much about what should be done as what can be done while still maintaining high performance and data security.

I should mention here for clarification that I have the system set up in such a way that anything downloaded, or installed Automatically goes to the Raid 0 Drives. I did not edit the registry, I simply changed some file locations, and made the Internet and Other programs such as steam and short cut menus point directly to the "E" drive, instead of the SSD "C" drive for storage priority and access.

This allows me to have the EXE on the desktop SSD while having it access the Data Drives for actual program launching. Without the need for an expensive Hardware raid driver, or even the Raid functions of the motherboard.

 

[13thmonkey]

This allows me to have the EXE on the desktop SSD while having it access the Data Drives for actual program launching. Without the need for an expensive Hardware raid driver, or even the Raid functions of the motherboard.

how does this work, changing the install location installs all of it there, not the .exe to c:\ and everything else to f:\

 

[Mal Pherian]

This allows me to have the EXE on the desktop SSD while having it access the Data Drives for actual program launching. Without the need for an expensive Hardware raid driver, or even the Raid functions of the motherboard.

how does this work, changing the install location installs all of it there, not the .exe to c:\ and everything else to f:\

General folders:

Click the start menu, Click Media/Movies/Documents/whatever (Right clikc) select Properties, on the Library tab (if it has one) click include a folder. Browse to your Data drives, make a folder named the same thing, click include folder, delete the old one, set the new one as active.

Repeat with each file location you want to change on the start menu.

Internet:

For the downloads from the internet, go into your browsers settings, change the download destination (Browse to your Data drives, make a folder called downloads, select it, save.

Games (like steam):

Install steam itself on your data drive. Now everything you download or install from steam will automatically install on your data drive. It will always put the Exe on your Desktop which is located on your SSD.

Finished. Hope that helps.

 

[McHenryB]

That is incorrect.

If you configure Steam to put it's files on (e.g.) drive D: it will place all files there, including the executables. All that it will place on the C: drive are desktop shortcuts, which are just links to the executables on D:. You are loading the games from the slow data drive not the SSD.

 

[Mal Pherian]

That is incorrect.

If you configure Steam to put it's files on (e.g.) drive D: it will place all files there, including the executables. All that it will place on the C: drive are desktop shortcuts, which are just links to the executables on D:. You are loading the games from the slow data drive not the SSD.

I never said it put the actually file on the ssd I stated it loaded form the Hdd. The Executable shortcut is simply on the desktop, it still loads from the HDD as I said.

Honestly though I mean I load games in less then 5 seconds with this setup... so I can't really complain.

 

[McHenryB]

This allows me to have the EXE on the desktop SSD while having it access the Data Drives for actual program launching.

As I said, that is incorrect. The .exe is not on the desktop and it doesn't load from the desktop. What is on the desktop is a .lnk file that refers to the .exe file on the data disk.

This is an important distinction as it affects the speed at which the program loads. The reason that people buy SSDs is usually so that programs stored on it load faster. As you are storing the games on the data drive they will not benefit from this.

 

[13thmonkey]

That is incorrect.

If you configure Steam to put it's files on (e.g.) drive D: it will place all files there, including the executables. All that it will place on the C: drive are desktop shortcuts, which are just links to the executables on D:. You are loading the games from the slow data drive not the SSD.

I never said it put the actually file on the ssd I stated it loaded form the Hdd. The Executable shortcut is simply on the desktop, it still loads from the HDD as I said.

Honestly though I mean I load games in less then 5 seconds with this setup... so I can't really complain.

the shortcut is on the SSD, it's the smallest part of the game, it would have practically zero influence. The .exe is in the installation folder.

Glad some others picked up on this as I couldn't get on line.

 

[Mal Pherian]

This allows me to have the EXE on the desktop SSD while having it access the Data Drives for actual program launching.

As I said, that is incorrect. The .exe is not on the desktop and it doesn't load from the desktop. What is on the desktop is a .lnk file that refers to the .exe file on the data disk.

This is an important distinction as it affects the speed at which the program loads. The reason that people buy SSDs is usually so that programs stored on it load faster. As you are storing the games on the data drive they will not benefit from this.

I am fully aware of that, I said EXE Shortcut" in my last post.

Everyone is aware steam puts a "Shortcut" on your desktop not the actual ExE. If you want the ExE on your Desktop you have to physically move it there and change the path yourself so it still works. which you could do if you wanted. But yes I meant shortcut in my original post, I just assumed everyone here already knew what I was talking about.

 

[Mal Pherian]

In any case, back on topic, what is the ideal setup for a Raid with 5 Hdd's? And which Hdd's should I go with, Raptors or Black Drives, or something else?

 

[McHenryB]

TBH, the best setup for your requirements is a single disk of the appropriate size.

 

[Mal Pherian]

TBH, the best setup for your requirements is a single disk of the appropriate size.

Yes, but I 'want" to use an SSD, and 5 other drives.

So that being said, does anyone know the best set up for a 5 HDD/SSD rig, and should I use Black drive, Raptors or what?

Thanks

 

[McHenryB]

1. Use the SSD as the boot drive and for OS installation. If it's big enough also use it for programs (which is easily arranged - just buy a big enough SSD).

2. Buy a proper RAID controller (which will cost you!) - something like this will be good: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118216 - and set the 5 drives up as a RAID 5 array with a hot spare (giving you 3x the size of the disks as available storage).

3. Buy the fastest drives you can afford. Preferably buy SAS drives, which any modern RAID controller should be able to handle. These ones will perform well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5EM2UE3860&cm_re=SAS_drives-_-22-178-677-_-Product

It's a lot more expensive than the most sensible setup, but if you must use 5 hard disks it's the best setup. And it will mean that you can run your computer 24x7 without having to power it down in the unlikely event of a disk failure. This is why enterprises use RAID and is really the only good reason to do so nowadays.

 

[Mal Pherian]

1. Use the SSD as the boot drive and for OS installation. If it's big enough also use it for programs (which is easily arranged - just buy a big enough SSD).

2. Buy a proper RAID controller (which will cost you!) - something like this will be good: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118216 - and set the 5 drives up as a RAID 5 array with a hot spare (giving you 3x the size of the disks as available storage).

3. Buy the fastest drives you can afford. Preferably buy SAS drives, which any modern RAID controller should be able to handle. These ones will perform well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5EM2UE3860&cm_re=SAS_drives-_-22-178-677-_-Product

It's a lot more expensive than the most sensible setup, but if you must use 5 hard disks it's the best setup. And it will mean that you can run your computer 24x7 without having to power it down in the unlikely event of a disk failure. This is why enterprises use RAID and is really the only good reason to do so nowadays.

Why do I need a raid controller?

I currently have an SSD as a boot drive in this mid range comp, and 2 1tb drives set in a raid 0. They run perfectly with 0 issues.

I am not using the motherboard or bios Raid, and all drives are set to ACHI. I simply used the disk management wizard windows 7 Pro provides to set it up.

Couldn't I do the same with the 1 SSD/OS and the 5 Data Drives? One of the Option in the Disk Management wizard is Raid 5.

Or am I missing something?

 

[McHenryB]

You asked for the best setup using 1 SSD and 5 HDs - that's what I gave you.

The sensible option is to use 1 SSD and a single 4TB drive and stop messing about with RAID - but that's not what you wanted. I appreciate that some people like to play with technology rather than just using it. I'm suggesting the ultimate playground for you.

You might like to note the following article: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/36504/how-to-create-a-software-raid-array-in-windows-7/

Note: RAID-5, although one of the options, isn’t actually available in Windows 7 due to licensing issues. Thanks to the commenters for pointing that out.

Anyway, that's enough from me. You are determined to use 5 disks in a RAID setup rather than a single large disk, and I'm not inclined to continue to try to convince you otherwise, so I'll leave you to work out the best way to utilize those resources.

 

[Mal Pherian]

Strange.... Raid 5 was available for me... I could have clicked it, I just decided to remove my 3rd drive and use a raid 0 on 2 instead.... I am using win 7 Pro, which has different licensing then "Premium", Same as Ultimate has different licensing then Pro. Maybe that's what it is. I am also using the 64bit version

I did call MS though about it, and they also told me I could use it. So... Yea, not sure why that would be an issue for him unless hes not using a genuine copy of windows.

Honestly, Raid 5 is a Storage setup. There are no licenses involved with it, no one "owns" Raid 5 or has the authority to license it for use to anyone, or restrict said usage. (Unless you mean like software/drivers etc, Not sure why your windows didn't come with that stuff, mine did). It's simply a feature either offered or not offered. I would guess some OS's simply do not offer "Support" for it.

Kind of like how windows premium does not support more then 16gb of ram for example. But Pro supports 32-64gb.

Only reason I can think that it wouldn't work for that guy is as I said, if it's not a genuine copy of windows, granted I didn't ask MS support "Why" it wouldn't work, they simply told me that with Windows Pro it should.

That being said I didn't actually try to enable it to find out, But it was an option and it was available for selection and usage.