SATA drive questions + raid questions

[O |V| 3 G A]

hi,

i`m in the market for a new HDD (my maxtor 40gb just aint big enough) and
i`m fancying making use of the 2x SATA ports on my a7n8x dlx mainboard.

i`m liking western digital's offering of their 10,000 rpm 8mb cache SATA
drive, but being only 36gb, it's just not big enough. is there any
manufacture making a 10k rpm drive around the 80-120gb area?

also, money permitting, i`m thinking about hitting the RAID striping scene,
and if the drive is too expensive, then i`d add the 2nd drive at a later
date. if i was todo this, i`d be running straight SATA for a while untill i
can afford the 2nd HDD for RAID. will i be able to add the 2nd drive and
setup a raid config without reinstalling winXP?

thanks
tim draper

 

[Mike Walsh]

The 10,000 RPM drives are built for speed; great for OS and applications but not big enough for serious data storage. You will have to settle for a 7200 RPM drive.

 

[JT]

hi,

i`m in the market for a new HDD (my maxtor 40gb just aint big enough) and
i`m fancying making use of the 2x SATA ports on my a7n8x dlx mainboard.

i`m liking western digital's offering of their 10,000 rpm 8mb cache SATA
drive, but being only 36gb, it's just not big enough. is there any
manufacture making a 10k rpm drive around the 80-120gb area?

also, money permitting, i`m thinking about hitting the RAID striping scene,
and if the drive is too expensive, then i`d add the 2nd drive at a later
date. if i was todo this, i`d be running straight SATA for a while untill i
can afford the 2nd HDD for RAID. will i be able to add the 2nd drive and
setup a raid config without reinstalling winXP?

thanks
tim draper

WD just introduced their 73gb 10k rpm Raptors. If they are anything like
the 36gb ones, they will be very fast. Put one in a DB server which needed
the speed and it is outstanding in performance. (Having a gig of ram, dual
channel DDR helps as well). If you need speed, these are as fast as it gets
without SCSI

 

[O |V| 3 G A]

exactly why i want one of the 10k raptors. tomshardware.com did a comparison
on it, with the 36gb drive and it beat all but the maxtor SCSI u320 10k.6
drive (including other scsi u320 drives)

looks like nowhere sells the 73gb yet (scan, dabs, komplett or ebuyer) but
hopefully by the time i get some money and decide i want to invest in RAID
SATA then there might be somewhere that sells it.

atm, i`m looking at 2x maxtor 120gb SATA 7200rpm with 8mb cache. 2nd best to
the raptor.

tim

 

[O |V| 3 G A]

another thing i didnt ask - with a RAID1 (striping) setup, if 1 drive goes
down (ie, faulty drive) does it take the other HDD with it for some reason?
or can i simply remove the faulty HDD, and revert back to a straight SATA
setup, with the 2nd good drive ?

tim

 

[O |V| 3 G A]

doh - should of been RAID0 (striping) - i was wrongly informed which was
mirroring and which was striping.

tim

 

[kony]

doh - should of been RAID0 (striping) - i was wrongly informed which was
mirroring and which was striping.

When one of the RAID 0 drives fails, the whole array is lost, no
possible way to recover UNLESS you get the same drive working again.

It would seem that you're trying to make a giant step in HDD usage
when what you really should do first is just buy a normal, larger 7K2
drive, and gain some background knowledge & experience using arrays,
BEFORE you need depend on one. RAID 0 arrays are a nice compliment to
already-adequate storage space but not a suitable replacement for it.

Since your system supports SATA you might go ahead and purchase an
SATA drive, but if you buy only one you will have to re-FDISK and
format when you add the second drive (later) to form the RAID 0 array.
Meaning, you need enough storage space on _other_ drives to backup all
that data first, unless you want to reinstall everything again,
including the OS. By making the backup you will not need to reinstall
the OS, just dupe the backup to the new array.


Dave

 

[JAD]

SATA is pretty new and will develop with time.....why not SCSI? Proven reliability

 

[JT]

Raid 1 is mirroring, RAID 0 is striping. In RAID 1, because the data is
mirrored if one drive goes bad, the other takes over. Of course if a virus
corrupts one drive, it corrupts the other as well.

In RAID 0, striping, the data is alternated between the two drives. If one
drive crashes, the data is lost even though the other drive is still good
and usable.

If you want raw speed, go RAID 0. If you want Data Integrity and
Reliability, RAID 1.

JT

 

[JT]

Price is a good reason to go SATA. Drives are cheaper, and controllers are
MUCH cheaper.

SATA is not that radical a jump from ATA 100/133. Most of the electronics
is ATA with some added SCSI features, which the manufacturers have been
doing for years. The serial connection is not radically different from
other high speed serial connections. This is an evolutionary step, not
revolutionaryl, so should be fairly solid.

 

[O |V| 3 G A]

If you want raw speed, go RAID 0. If you want Data Integrity and
Reliability, RAID 1.

excuse my newbie atitude to RAID, but isnt RAID0 just as reliable as normal
ata66/100/133? where as raid1 the chances of BOTH drives dying is somewhat
slim, thus improving it's reliability factor

at the end of the day, my pc is for home use only - for myself only, used
primarly for gaming, so valuable data is not stored - data reliability is
not that high on my list of prioritys, where as speed is.

tim

 

[JT]

Reliability, RAID 1.

excuse my newbie atitude to RAID, but isnt RAID0 just as reliable as normal
ata66/100/133? where as raid1 the chances of BOTH drives dying is somewhat
slim, thus improving it's reliability factor

at the end of the day, my pc is for home use only - for myself only, used
primarly for gaming, so valuable data is not stored - data reliability is
not that high on my list of prioritys, where as speed is.

tim

Simplified it is the chance of a failure goes up as the number of
components involved increases, if the chance of each item failing is the
still the same. So if the odds of asingle drive failing in a year is one in
ten, the odds of one of 2 drives failing is two in ten, or 1 in 5. With the
reliability of hard drives, this is not a major risk, but it is riskier
than just a single drive failing.

Doesn't mean not to use RAID 0. Means be aware of the cons as well as the
pros. Also means you will still need a way to backup critical and important
data as all mechanical devices will fail, it is just a matter of when.

JT

 

[kony]

Reliability, RAID 1.

excuse my newbie atitude to RAID, but isnt RAID0 just as reliable as normal
ata66/100/133? where as raid1 the chances of BOTH drives dying is somewhat
slim, thus improving it's reliability factor

RAID 0 has lower reliablity than a single drive, since there are two
dependent drives each with it's own failure rate. Also IF the drives
are contributing to each other's heat retention due to chassis
mounting configuration the failure rate would be further escalated.
Then there's other factors making data salvage more difficult... for
example, possible lack of redundant RAID controller... Do you have a
second duplicate SATA RAID controller in case the first one
(motherboard) were to fail? You can't necessarily assume that a RAID
array created on one controller will work on any other.

at the end of the day, my pc is for home use only - for myself only, used
primarly for gaming, so valuable data is not stored - data reliability is
not that high on my list of prioritys, where as speed is.

Then it may not be very important to you, but are you sure your time
isn't of any value? It can take many hours->days to reproduce
(completely reinstall and tweak) a PC, often that time is worth
*something*.


Dave

 

[O |V| 3 G A]

RAID 0 has lower reliablity than a single drive, since there are two
dependent drives each with it's own failure rate. Also IF the drives
are contributing to each other's heat retention due to chassis
mounting configuration the failure rate would be further escalated.
Then there's other factors making data salvage more difficult... for
example, possible lack of redundant RAID controller... Do you have a
second duplicate SATA RAID controller in case the first one
(motherboard) were to fail? You can't necessarily assume that a RAID
array created on one controller will work on any other.


Then it may not be very important to you, but are you sure your time
isn't of any value? It can take many hours->days to reproduce
(completely reinstall and tweak) a PC, often that time is worth
*something*.


Dave

only cuz of my poxy ISDN 64k line
least it's not long till adsl is enabled in my exhange - nov 5th here i
come!! (i`m a brit btw). will be burning some CD's tonight, cuz if scan get
their ass in gear, my 2x western digital raptor 10,000rpm's will be coming
tomorrow!

tim

 

[David MacLeod]

I think I was just reading about raid 0,1 setups. wouldn't this be the best
of both worlds?
I am also looking into this only I probably will not be using sata drives
soon. I have 5 ide here, might as well use them.
thanks

 

[DaveW]

No, there aren't any 10,000 rpm SATA drives besides the 36 GB WD Raptor.
And if you install just one SATA harddrive now, you'll have to reinstall XP
when you add the 2nd drive for RAID 0.

 

[JT]

No, there aren't any 10,000 rpm SATA drives besides the 36 GB WD Raptor.
And if you install just one SATA harddrive now, you'll have to reinstall XP
when you add the 2nd drive for RAID 0.

There are now 73GB Raptors from WD.

 

[drumguy1384]

I think I was just reading about raid 0,1 setups. wouldn't this be the best
of both worlds?
I am also looking into this only I probably will not be using sata drives
soon. I have 5 ide here, might as well use them.
thanks

Yes, RAID 0+1 is "the best of both worlds" ... only down side is most people
don't have 4 drives lying around to run it on.

For optimal allocation of space those 4 drives should also all be the exact
same size. (though a little variation is not usually a problem with most
RAID controllers)

Basically in RAID 0+1 you have 2 stripe sets (mode 0) one mirroring the
other (mode 1). This has the plusses of increased speed, as well as data
integrity ... only downside is that, like with RAID 1, half of your total
space is lost due to the mirror effect.

But even with RAID 5, which uses 3 drives, (and also provides both speed and
data integrity ... though implementation in ATA is sparse ... it's mostly a
SCSI thing) you still lose some of your total to checksums.

Ahh, such is the cost of data integrity ...


Drumguy