To RAID or not to RAID, that is the question

[Nathan K]

Hi guys, looking for some friendly advice.
Some background info first... in my PC, I have a 256GB SSD with my OS and all programs on, a 64GB SSD I got cheap that I use for things like my photoshop cache and my dropbox folder, and then a 2TB HDD that all of my music, photos and videos are stored on.
I just got a hold of another 2TB HDD quite cheap, and am thinking of putting the two hard drives into a RAID.
Everything I'd store on these drives would be backed up, to my onedrive account (I have 1.3TB of storage on my account for the next year or so) and additionally to an external 2TB hard drive.
Everything on the onedrive is backed up automatically (my photos and music library), and everything that isn't (just movies) I update my backup on the external drive once a month.
So, I was going to ask, is it worth using these two drives as a RAID to increase performance? I don't strictly need faster performance just for music and movies, but it would make managing my photo library quicker when I'm editing (I do some batch processing) and would make virus scans quicker which would be nice.
Should I go for RAID 0 to increase both read and write speeds, or RAID 1 to increase read speeds but have redundancy? Is redundancy necessary when I have my backups?
Also I wanted to ask if a RAID will work on two different drives, they're both 2TB 7200rpm with 64mb cache, but from different manufacturers and are different ages.

 

[Rogue Leader]

RAID 1 does not increase performance in any way. It just provides redundancy.

You do not want to RAID 2 different drives. Don't get me wrong it will work, but RAID 0 is very dependent on both drives functioning the same, being that they are different brands and ages that could introduce some issues. If your RAID array fails you will lose your data unrecoverablely. Now yea I know you have backups and thats good, but can you afford the down time?

If you can, then its worth the experiment, but you may find yourself having to fix it all sooner than later.

 

[USAFRet]

In a consumer situation, there is rarely a need for RAID of any type.

A RAID 1 is 'redundant', only for a physical drive fail, and you need actual 24/7 uninterrupted ops. You still need a viable backup. And if you have that, and can handle a 20 minute restore time, you don't really need the RAID 1.

It's OK for hobbyist messing around, but more work than any small benefit it may give.

make managing my photo library quicker when I'm editing (I do some batch processing) and would make virus scans quicker which would be nice

That's what an SSD is for...

 

[Nathan K]

In a consumer situation, there is rarely a need for RAID of any type.

A RAID 1 is 'redundant', only for a physical drive fail, and you need actual 24/7 uninterrupted ops. You still need a viable backup. And if you have that, and can handle a 20 minute restore time, you don't really need the RAID 1.

It's OK for hobbyist messing around, but more work than any small benefit it may give.

make managing my photo library quicker when I'm editing (I do some batch processing) and would make virus scans quicker which would be nice

That's what an SSD is for...

I can't afford an SSD of sufficient size to replace my hard drives, so am considering a RAID to improve performance at a cheaper price point. I'm aware and have expressed there's no need to have this modest performance increase enabled by a RAID for these files, but thought I'd try it since I got such a good deal on the second hard drive and am just looking for advice

 

[USAFRet]

In a consumer situation, there is rarely a need for RAID of any type.

A RAID 1 is 'redundant', only for a physical drive fail, and you need actual 24/7 uninterrupted ops. You still need a viable backup. And if you have that, and can handle a 20 minute restore time, you don't really need the RAID 1.

It's OK for hobbyist messing around, but more work than any small benefit it may give.

make managing my photo library quicker when I'm editing (I do some batch processing) and would make virus scans quicker which would be nice

That's what an SSD is for...

I can't afford an SSD of sufficient size to replace my hard drives, so am considering a RAID to improve performance at a cheaper price point. I'm aware and have expressed there's no need to have this modest performance increase enabled by a RAID for these files, but thought I'd try it since I got such a good deal on the second hard drive and am just looking for advice

What will go on this?
The OS and applications? Or secondary files? Or everything?
Which RAID level are you talking about? 1, 0, what?

But you don't get an SSD to hold 'everything'. The OS and applications, yes. Movies? No...a movie doesn't play any faster if it lives on an SSD.

 

[Nathan K]

In a consumer situation, there is rarely a need for RAID of any type.

A RAID 1 is 'redundant', only for a physical drive fail, and you need actual 24/7 uninterrupted ops. You still need a viable backup. And if you have that, and can handle a 20 minute restore time, you don't really need the RAID 1.

It's OK for hobbyist messing around, but more work than any small benefit it may give.

make managing my photo library quicker when I'm editing (I do some batch processing) and would make virus scans quicker which would be nice

That's what an SSD is for...

I can't afford an SSD of sufficient size to replace my hard drives, so am considering a RAID to improve performance at a cheaper price point. I'm aware and have expressed there's no need to have this modest performance increase enabled by a RAID for these files, but thought I'd try it since I got such a good deal on the second hard drive and am just looking for advice

What will go on this?
The OS and applications? Or secondary files? Or everything?
Which RAID level are you talking about? 1, 0, what?

But you don't get an SSD to hold 'everything'. The OS and applications, yes. Movies? No...a movie doesn't play any faster if it lives on an SSD.

If you read my original post..........................
No, I don't need faster access to play movies. But, I do run a full virus scan once a month that takes hours and it'd be nice if this could be faster. Necessary? No. Convenient since I have two hard drives and it wouldn't take that long to set up? Absolutely.
Also, again, faster access to my photo library would be nice, as batch editing 100s of files on a hard drive is slow and I'd like this to be faster but can't afford an SSD big enough for so.
So basically to completely reiterate my original question:
I have two hard drives. I would like faster access to many of the files on these hard drives. Is it worth trying out a RAID configuration since I can't afford an SSD big enough.
Simple

 

[ahnilated]

Start the virus scan when you go to sleep and the problem is solved.

 

[Nathan K]

Start the virus scan when you go to sleep and the problem is solved.

I don't like leaving a high wattage PC running overnight, complete waste of electricity.

 

[Eximo]

Then have it automatically shutdown when the scan is complete. Usually an option on the scheduler for those type of things.

 

[USAFRet]

To reiterate:

A RAID 1 (mirror) is redundancy, not speed. Read speed may be increased a little bit, but not write. And 2TB + 2BT + RAID 1 = a 2TB 'drive'.
You photo editing, which is mostly write, is not benefited here.

RAID 0 is speed, but zero redundancy. One drive burps wrong, and all data is lost.

But, for your secondary space of the 2TB HDD's...sure, you can do some sort of RAID with those. But don't expect any real performance benefit.

 

[mjslakeridge]

If you know from past experience how long the virus scan takes to complete, set the PC to sleep or hibernate after that length of time (add a cushion of maybe 1 hour).

 

[ahnilated]

If you would really like, I can run a virus scan on my Samsung 512GB SSD (550MB/s sustained read/writes) and my Samsung 512GB M2 (2500MB/s sustained) and tell you the difference in speeds. I bet you will be disappointed. They both have the same data on them as one is the backup of the other.

 

[Rogue Leader]

You may have missed my reply above but based on your responses you are expecting a huge performance jump, however you will not get it. Yes RAID 0 is "faster" but its not going to make your hours long virus scan run in half the time. And with 2 drives of differing ages its risky.

 

[Nathan K]

You may have missed my reply above but based on your responses you are expecting a huge performance jump, however you will not get it. Yes RAID 0 is "faster" but its not going to make your hours long virus scan run in half the time. And with 2 drives of differing ages its risky.

No... I'm not expecting a huge performance jump, I even used the word modest. All I want to know is this: will a RAID 0 on these two drives give me ANY performance increase even if only slight, particularly when batch editing files, as my processor is currently held back by the slow drive.

 

[USAFRet]

You may have missed my reply above but based on your responses you are expecting a huge performance jump, however you will not get it. Yes RAID 0 is "faster" but its not going to make your hours long virus scan run in half the time. And with 2 drives of differing ages its risky.

No... I'm not expecting a huge performance jump, I even used the word modest. All I want to know is this: will a RAID 0 on these two drives give me ANY performance increase even if only slight, particularly when batch editing files, as my processor is currently held back by the slow drive.

Yes it will, if the actual issue is writing to the drive.
IMHO not worth the hazards, and maybe not so you can actually see. But yes, your benchmarks will be faster.
Actual use, maybe, maybe not. You'll just have to try it and see.

 

[Nathan K]

You may have missed my reply above but based on your responses you are expecting a huge performance jump, however you will not get it. Yes RAID 0 is "faster" but its not going to make your hours long virus scan run in half the time. And with 2 drives of differing ages its risky.

No... I'm not expecting a huge performance jump, I even used the word modest. All I want to know is this: will a RAID 0 on these two drives give me ANY performance increase even if only slight, particularly when batch editing files, as my processor is currently held back by the slow drive.

Yes it will, if the actual issue is writing to the drive.
IMHO not worth the hazards, and maybe not so you can actually see. But yes, your benchmarks will be faster.
Actual use, maybe, maybe not. You'll just have to try it and see.

Well I've had a performance monitor open while I've been running some things and the CPU load is between 50-60% whereas the drive is constantly at 100%. So surely in this real life scenario, a RAID 0 with faster read&write speeds would make this particular task run slightly quicker? Am I wrong? I'm aware the performance increase will still be held back by seek times, so I'm not expecting it to run in half the time. So I guess the question I've really wanted answering this whole time is can I get this task to run perhaps 10-15% faster by having a RAID 0

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, it will be faster.
An SSD as your project drive would be way faster.

But yes...that RAID 0 will be faster than a single HDD.

 

[Nathan K]

Yes, it will be faster.
An SSD as your project drive would be way faster.

But yes...that RAID 0 will be faster than a single HDD.

Thank you