To Raid or not to Raid

[Hot Tub]

I am thinking of getting an Asus A7V333 motherboard and I see there is only $20 difference between a raid board and a non-raid board. I don't think I want or need raid today but was wondering, "do I have to use it if I get it?" Can I just let it sit there just in case I change my mind down the road. I plan on using two disk drives in the system but will use the second one strictly for backup purposes only. Also, if down the road I decide to go with a raid setup, do the hard drives need to be the same speed, brand or have any other similer requirements. Will any drive combo work? I am not a "gamer" so does that make a difference in my decision?

[DoPeY5007]

no you don't have to use the RAID controller.



I have IDE RAID and I wont go with out




and when setting up a RAID it is best to have two of the same drive, but that is not a requirement. if you use a 40 and a 20 the 40 will turn into a 20. and if one is slowe then the other the faster will go the speeed of the slower




hope that helps

[Ladogaboy]

Well, the way I figure it, you might not be planning on using RAID now, but you might in the future. If you, in the future, do plan on using, you will have to go out and buy a separate card, which will probably cost atleast $20.

Anyway, if you know for sure that you don't need it, then go ahead and save yourself $20, imo.

[Hot Tub]

So, were saying if I add a fast Caviar Special Edition Western Digital 80gig, 7200 rpm, 8 mb cache hard drive to my present slow IBM 5400 17 gig, no cache hard drive, the system will be only as fast as my slowest drive? Other then that and also losing the data on one hard drive causes one to lose the data on the other hard drive, what other advantages are there to raid?

[Heihachi]

pretty much...

Honestly.. for ALL the comps I build nowadays.. I ALWAYS do raid.. as if it's standard... I mean.. it doesn't cost much more...

Whatever size HD space total you want.. just split that by 2... and raid 0 them... I mean.. it never hurts to raid ot...

but that's my .02

the SE drives.. are fast.. but still a little slower than a standard raid 0 setup.

If I had a choice between 1x 80gb SE drive... or 2x40gb regulard WD drives.. I'd go w/ the 2x40 WD's....

but that's just me...

actually..if it was me... I'd go 2x80gb SE... nah.. I'd go 4x120gb SE drives on the abit board... hehe

[Bires]

I've run some tests on my RAID system, and found the actual speed of the array to be 50-60% faster than the slowest drive.

Raw Data (From Sandra2002):

Each 40G by itself:
24000-25000 kpbs

The Array:
34000-36000 kpbs

I'm a little perplexed why many people say that RAID arrays are twice as fast as the slowest drive. I figure it must depend greatly on the stripe size.

[johnnymk]

Does a RAID card or built-in RAID use an additional IRQ?

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by johnnymk
Does a RAID card or built-in RAID use an additional IRQ? it would act just like a regular IDE controller

[Ladogaboy]

Originally posted by Hot Tub
So, were saying if I add a fast Caviar Special Edition Western Digital 80gig, 7200 rpm, 8 mb cache hard drive to my present slow IBM 5400 17 gig, no cache hard drive, the system will be only as fast as my slowest drive?

If you did that, your 80 gig would not only have to slow to the speed of your 17 gig, but it would also only have 17 gigs out of the 80 available for use.



Originally posted by Hot Tub
Other then that and also losing the data on one hard drive causes one to lose the data on the other hard drive, what other advantages are there to raid?

There are several different types of RAID arrays. It seems that RAID0 is one of the most popular, because it gives you the greatest speed increase. Also, some of the other RAID setups require 3 drives. But, in the case of RAID 0+1 and RAID 5, they use something called mirroring, which actually makes your data safer than being on a single drive.

Anyway, if you want to read more about all of the advantages and disadvantages, here's a link to a fairly thorough article.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491&p=1

[Jeffbx]

Also keep in mind that RAID 0 effectively doubles your chance of a drive failure -

This is because 'RAID 0' is actually NOT RAID at all (which is why it's RAID ZERO). The definition of RAID is a REDUNDANT array of inexpensive disks, and RAID 0 is not at all redundant.

Your chance of failure doubles with RAID 0 because your 2 drives are now acting as one. If either one of the drives goes bad, your entire array is gone. Moral of the story - if you're using RAID 0, be sure to back it up regularly!

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by Jeffbx
Moral of the story - if you're using RAID 0, be sure to back it up regularly! I try to only keep the OS and installed programs and temp folders on my RAID 0

[PoloM1]

I would say if you don't plan to use raid now, save yourself the money and get the non-raid version and later if you plan to use raid get a controller card that supports more types of raid than just Raid 0, Raid 1, and Raid 0+1.... preferably Raid 5, that's the one I think I would want to use if I ever decide to go with Raid.... but I don't know how much a controller card that supports Raid 5 costs, I hear they are more expensive, so that might not be an option.

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by chosenfool



but hey! spend if you got the money - i know im happy with the RAID array i got. :) :stupid:




it is great!

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by chosenfool


/me hugs my computer...did you hug your computer today? /me hugs his computer and gives the iWill SideRAID card a high 5