RAID 0 or Not to RAID 0 -- That is the Question

I have the opportunity to setup a RAID 0 array on my PC. I have 2 matching 500GB HD's @ 7200RPM. I am using my PC for work in the Office 2007 area and of course to play games, such as COD 4, Oblivion Shivering Isles, NWN2 MOTB, Morrowind with 2 addons, The Battle for Middle-Earth 2 with Battle against the Witch....

Will the gains be significent to load up RAID, or are the possible issues out weigh it???

Joey

If your HDs are the WD "raid enhanced" drives then maybe it would be a good idea to set up a slave array while booting from a single hd. your games would load 1.5x faster if they have not already been cached into dram by superfetch. And media production would benefit.

Otherwise no, a thousand times no! especially with critical Office data.

RAID provides minimal benefit for considerable instability. Separate drives can even be faster than a raid array (up to 2x). And you can transport data between computers more easily.

If your drives are not raid enhanced, then the aggressive error recovery techniques used in standard HDs can cause the array to lose synch, ie: all data.

raid benefits the hd manufacturers only. It is pure hype IMHO. But I stand alone on this one.

Simon

Your not alone geezer10.

I agree 110%!

In other words...

What he said.

Go get one more drive and use it for a backup and set up some auto backup program. The speed difference is well worth it for games and general OS operation. Just back up whatever you need in office frequently. I have thousands of photos and documents, Office personal folders, passwords installers and other things backed up. It can get a bit tedious but I do it for the speed, and it's worth it. I wouldn't worry too much about raid enhanced, but if they are that's nice too.
You can look around here and check to see if you have a reliable controller or not. The Marvel controller on my board is frequently complained about but I have had no trouble at all with it and RAIDs. I have noticed that a mirrored RAID (RAID1) on mine didn't like crashes too much, it rebuilt after every crash and it really slowed down the computer while doing it and it took hours.
Bottom line: DO IT! You will notice the speed increase while loading the system into it.
BUT-if there is no backup, I would go with answer number 1.

A proper RAID 0 (striping) array is going to be faster than any single drive of the same type. So there is going to be a performance benefit. However, how many of us actually would benefit for that extra performance? Not many is my bet.

Reliability is a whole different issue. Having two drives in a RAID 0 array versus one drive with no RAID, doubles the likelihood of a drive related failure. That doesn't take into account any issues with the RAID controller used.

With drive prices the way they are today, I would be doing RAID 1 (mirroring) before I did RAID 0. Also, I would make sure that you have a good backup plan....

S-

Simon,

This wrong and makes no sense at all. I use RAID all the time (and have for years) with "standard HDs". What you say is simply wrong. I run my companies data center and RAID is an integral part of any "High Availability" strategy. What are these error recovery techniques that allegedly cause an array to lose all data or "degrade" an array?

S-

what you're talking about is RAID 1 (or better) not RAID 0.

read this: http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2879-001119.pdf

you know I have just got the feeling WD has withdrawn the RE series..

The Hard Drives in question are:Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS

Reviewe: This 500GB Barracuda 7200.10SATA 3Gbps internal hard drive provides a speedy 11ms average access time at a 7200rpm spindle speed. Its 3Gbps transfer rate via its SATA interface will knock your socks off. Its Native Command Queuing provides higher system performance in demanding applications, reduced drive wear and tear, and easier system integration. Plus, this super-quiet drive is almost inaudible. The difference between idle and seek can hardly be detected by human ear, making drive operation almost silent.

So this would do well in a RAID 0 environment, especially with the great warranty!

Thoughts?? Joey

Simon,

I've read the marketing fluff that WD puts out regarding time-limited error recovery (TLER). It solves a problem that just isn't really a problem. Instead, you should look in every data center in the world and tell me what market share Western Digital has compared to Seagate. Hint: Seagate has the MUCH larger share.

The "the aggressive error recovery techniques" (remapping bad sectors) you decry have no bearing on RAID 0 arrays since the conflict that can be caused only comes into play with RAID levels higher than 0. RAID level 0 does not care how long the remapping takes since all RAID level 0 does is stripe data. There is no mirroring or parity involved.

So, if you want, bust my chops for talking about RAID levels higher than RAID 0 when the OP was talking about RAID 0. But at least bring up a "problem" that relates to RAID 0 in the first place......

S-

I have used a RAID0 setup on my PC for several years now. I used to use it when I had XP, both the Home and Professional versions (all kept up to date whilst I was using them), and now with Vista SP1. In all cases, my system has been essentially the same with the same hard drives installed (although I have upgraded my RAM, graphics card, processor and optical drives). The most important thing to remember when setting up a RAID array is to use IDENTICAL hard drives. This means capacity, rotational speed, buffer size and interface type. It is best to obtain drives from the same manufacturer, if at all possible, and to acquire them at the same time. To date, I have not had a single problem with my setup, and my system works flawlessly. I am using the same RAID driver that I used to install Vista originally, and this is causing no problems at all. My advice with drivers is 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
Dwarf