About RAID-0

[Stevethegreat]

Hi,

For three years now I had a twin raptor 74GB in Raid-0 setup to run my OS, games and some demanding read/write software. It always worked as it should and I considered it my most worthwhile purchase, however last month one of my two raptors died thus I started the RMA procedures (it was in a 5 year warranty contract). To my surprise I received -two days ago- from WD the newer 150GB raptor which to my knowledge is a better all-around product than the older 74GB models.

Now I'm left with one 74gig raptor and a newer 150 one which put me in thoughts. Considering that raid-0 is the riskier of all raid setups would it be worthwhile performance-wise to stripe the two HDDs or should I leave the 150gig raptor alone and use the older one on a different PC. I ask this because HDD speed is everything for my work and I would like to be sure -before proceeding- which would be the best method to squeeze every last drop of juice from my system. Would my older raptor actually slow down my newer one or the performance difference between the two is negligible and thus I can proceed on striping them as usual?

Thanks for your advice in advance.....

[Serra]

If you use software that does a lot of read -> write, I would avoid RAID-0 like the plague. What you want is to read from one disk and write to another if at all possible. If it's a requirement for your income, doubly stay away from RAID-0 unless you have a backup solution.

If your work just asks for tons of read throughput you can go ahead and RAID them, but your speeds won't improve any versus a RAID-0 array of 2x74GB raptors... and, of course, you'll also lose 75GB of space. If those terms are acceptable, then go for it. Otherwise... yeah, that's kind of an annoying situation.

[Stevethegreat]

@Serra: I don't worry about backups, I have a pretty sophisticated system in place. Even now that I had the accident I lost close to no data. What I'm most interested in this certain setup is the greatest efficiency which is the greatest read/write speeds for my purposes. I would consider solid state drives but I would do so only when they become more economical, for now I'll have to "put up" with the raptors.

So you're saying, if I'm interpreting you well, that the more juice I can get is -again- if I stripe the drives with only downside the loss of extra storage that WD so graciously gave me, no? If that's the case then I can sacrifice the extra storage, it's a bit of a bummer but I don't have many options. To say the truth the most I'm worried is about possible lock-ups and instabilities that I may encounter with an asymmetrical setup, if I can be sure about that, too, then I would be able to proceed on setting my system up.

Again, thanks for the advice.

[Buckeye]

I have been running my 74GB Raptors in Raid 0 for something like a year 24/7 with out any problems <knock on wood>. But I use a WHS for backups so I don't worry about it.


In retro spec next time for this machine I would not do a raid setup as it's very nice to be able to just unplg drives and pop them in another machine to get at data incase something goes wrong with this comp.

Most of my data is kept of the raid tho so it's ok. Raid for programs and such and data on seperate drive for data for safety.

[Stevethegreat]

Raid for programs and such and data on seperate drive for data for safety.

No worries, that's what I do. However I still don't have a real answer regarding asymmetrical drives (one 150, while the other 75gigs), how would they work out in raid-0 regarding stability? Anyone tried?

[Buckeye]

No worries, that's what I do. However I still don't have a real answer regarding asymmetrical drives (one 150, while the other 75gigs), how would they work out in raid-0 regarding stability? Anyone tried?

Oh, I do not think you can use different size drives in a raid 0 setup.

So No mix'd drives in Raid 0

You would have to use a Just A Bunch Of Dives setup, JBOD ? like how my WHS uses mix'd size's of drives. But that would kill performance.

Besides the type of raid setup with perofrmance loss for that, the slowest drive sets the pace for all drives in JBOD.

[Serra]

No worries, that's what I do. However I still don't have a real answer regarding asymmetrical drives (one 150, while the other 75gigs), how would they work out in raid-0 regarding stability? Anyone tried?

Yeah, you're just fine to use two different sized drives. It's basically like partitioning the one drive... and just losing the ability to access the other partition.

Stability should be fine. If you were happy with the performance you got before, then it's an option. Unfortunately you won't get any better performance... but hey, you can't overclock it anyway.

[Stevethegreat]

Thanks for (all) the info. I decided to buy a second raptor-X eventually, so that I can make use of the first one (the one that WD sent me) in its full capacity.

As for the 74GB raptor I'm wondering if it would make sense to stripe it with a 7200RPM 80GB drive, performance-wise, for another PC's purposes. Would it be faster than (the) raptor by itself or should I leave the 80GB HDD alone? Thanks again.

[Stevethegreat]

Can somebody inform me if it would be worthwhile to stripe a 10000 drive with a 7200 one? Thanks

[One_Hertz]

Can somebody inform me if it would be worthwhile to stripe a 10000 drive with a 7200 one? Thanks

no, your raid array would have the responce time of the 7200 drive.