Which RAID to go for???
- Thread starter mr 333
- Start date
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jimmysmitty
Champion
- Oct 5, 2007
- 21,605
- 599
- 59,140
In all honesty none. RAID was good quite a while ago but unless you are planning on running a massive data store, in which case you normally have a server with SAS based HDDs for RAID, it wont benefit you in any way. Even RAID 1, which is a redundant based array, is just doubling your possible failure rate.
Better option is a SSD for the OS and some programs and a single large drive for data. If you want a backup, backup the data to an off site cloud based backup. That is vastly more secure than a RAID.
Better option is a SSD for the OS and some programs and a single large drive for data. If you want a backup, backup the data to an off site cloud based backup. That is vastly more secure than a RAID.
geofelt
Titan
- Oct 9, 2006
- 54,396
- 4,189
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What are you trying to accomplish?
The value of raid-1 and it's variants like raid-5 is that you can recover from a drive failure quickly. It is for servers that can not tolerate any interruption.
Modern hard drives have a advertised mean time to failure on the order of 500,000+ hours. That is something like 50 years. SSD's are similar.
With raid-1 you are protecting yourself from specifically a hard drive failure. Not from other failures such as viruses, operator error,
malware, raid controller failure fire, theft, etc.
For that, you need external backup. If you have external backup, and can tolerate some recovery time, you do not need raid-1
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.
Here is a study using ssd devices in raid-0.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html
Spoiler... no benefit at all.
Do you now have those devices.
?
If not, rethink.
One larger ssd is faster and longer lasting than two smaller ones.
SSHD is ok if you need a large drive and have room for only one, like in a laptop.
Otherwise, the size of the ssd cache is generally too small to be really useful.
Such drives will often be backed up by slower 54oo rpm drives.
If you need storage, buy a single large conventional hard drive.
If you need performance, buy a ssd for windows at least, and preferably for everything else but video files and backups.
The value of raid-1 and it's variants like raid-5 is that you can recover from a drive failure quickly. It is for servers that can not tolerate any interruption.
Modern hard drives have a advertised mean time to failure on the order of 500,000+ hours. That is something like 50 years. SSD's are similar.
With raid-1 you are protecting yourself from specifically a hard drive failure. Not from other failures such as viruses, operator error,
malware, raid controller failure fire, theft, etc.
For that, you need external backup. If you have external backup, and can tolerate some recovery time, you do not need raid-1
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.
Here is a study using ssd devices in raid-0.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html
Spoiler... no benefit at all.
Do you now have those devices.
?
If not, rethink.
One larger ssd is faster and longer lasting than two smaller ones.
SSHD is ok if you need a large drive and have room for only one, like in a laptop.
Otherwise, the size of the ssd cache is generally too small to be really useful.
Such drives will often be backed up by slower 54oo rpm drives.
If you need storage, buy a single large conventional hard drive.
If you need performance, buy a ssd for windows at least, and preferably for everything else but video files and backups.
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