To Raid or not to Raid

[BH2]

Hi,
I have just build a new computer with Three hard drives, 1 x Ide and 2 x
Sata. I have an epox 9NDA3J Mobo which supports raid, is it worth putting
raid on my computer and what would the ad and disadvantages be.
Thanks for your advice
Regards
Bob

 

[Cuzman]

BH2 wrote:

" I have just build a new computer with Three hard drives, 1 x Ide and
2 x Sata. I have an epox 9NDA3J Mobo which supports raid, is it worth
putting raid on my computer and what would the ad and disadvantages be. "


What do you want? Speed? Some security from hard drive failure?

It will only work if the two SATA drives are the same. You can use the
IDE drive as a scratch disk and then run either a RAID-0 or a RAID-1
array with the two SATA disks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

 

[Hackworth]

BH2 wrote:

" I have just build a new computer with Three hard drives, 1 x Ide and 2
x Sata. I have an epox 9NDA3J Mobo which supports raid, is it worth
putting raid on my computer and what would the ad and disadvantages be. "


What do you want? Speed? Some security from hard drive failure?

It will only work if the two SATA drives are the same. You can use the
IDE drive as a scratch disk and then run either a RAID-0 or a RAID-1 array
with the two SATA disks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

Just to be clear, RAID1 (mirroring) *will* work with disks that aren't
exactly the same. However, the array will be limited to the capacity of the
smaller drive and/or the speed of the slower drive.

RAID0 is a different story, of course, and needs both drives to be
identical.

 

[Bioboffin]

Just to be clear, RAID1 (mirroring) *will* work with disks that aren't
exactly the same. However, the array will be limited to the capacity
of the smaller drive and/or the speed of the slower drive.

RAID0 is a different story, of course, and needs both drives to be
identical.

Umm... no it doesn't. It is more efficient to use two identical drives -
because you lose the difference in size between them; but it works with two
different drives. Whether it makes much difference in everyday use is
another matter. See:

http://www.overclockercafe.com/Articles/RAID/

John.

 

[BH2]

Ok Guys thanks,
both my sata drives are exactly the same
regards
Bob

 

[pck920]

It doesn't look like you need RAID... Maybe Raid 1 to protect what you
have..
Raid 0 is a pain if one of the drives go bye bye..
and besides, you wil be using on-board raid. and that generally takes
up CPU cycles.. not much.. but neither the less.

 

[pck920]

It doesn't look like you need RAID... Maybe Raid 1 to protect what you

have..
Raid 0 is a pain if one of the drives go bye bye..
and besides, you wil be using on-board raid. and that generally takes
up CPU cycles.. not much.. but neither the less.
On that note.. if you serve or download alot and you want fast transfer

speed between the drives.. then raid is the way to go....

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[ticars]

Hi,
I have just build a new computer with Three hard drives, 1 x Ide and 2 x
Sata. I have an epox 9NDA3J Mobo which supports raid, is it worth putting
raid on my computer and what would the ad and disadvantages be.
Thanks for your advice
Regards
Bob

Obviously it depends on which RAID you are talking about. Whether you
need to the data protection that RAID 1 offers is completely up to you.
If you choose that, you get no performance gains, you will lose 50% of
the the total capacity of the two drives you RAID, but you will get a
constantly mirrored drive in case of failure.

As for RAID 0; I setup my machine with RAID 0; but have since removed
it. With RAID 0 you get in theory a large increase in drive
performance, but you increase the chances of drive failure by just
under 100% (assuming two drives). You can really see this performance
gain if you are moving large files around (100 MB or so). In practice
I didn't see much of a gain at all. I think the reason being is that
seek time for smaller files plays a greater factor than the actual peak
throughput capacity. RAID 0 won't really help with the seek time with
your files. I got much better real world improvement by using a faster
hard drive and keeping the hard drive defragged (DiskKeeper does a much
better job than the built in defragger). Your mileage may vary though;
I'm sure there are lots of peopel that will tell you that it was night
and day with RAID 0.