Should I Raid It or Run a Single??

[k-]

I've been told that Raid0 is very worth it and is very fast.

but someone told me that if you are going to format one partition for a new os install, that you have to delete ALL the partitions before.

Is this true? Or is it just the same as a single HD where you can just format One partition.

So, can i raid these HDs? and would it work well?
http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=004652&cid=HD.96
two of them or two of these HDs??
http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=008762&cid=HD.96

 

[xientist]

Theoretically, RAID 0 increases performance doubles the transfer rates, however, be reminded that it has no redundancy or whatsoever. You may see performance increase like in game loading time. If you want more speed and don't care about the safety of the data, they it's worth it. If i were you, i'll rather take the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9. It beats the WD in most benchmarks i saw last time.

 

[michaelahess]

Samsung Spinpoint 250GB Sata's, two are faster than a single raptor, search for my name and you'll see a recent thread where my drives are almost as fast as 2 15k scsi drives. Don't worry about data redundancy. If your only drive fails you're screwed, and honestly, two drives doesn't double your chances of a crash.

 

[k-]

I'm not QUITE sure what you mean by not safe.

So if one of my HD fails, i can just format two HDs and install a os and still be fine??

or if one of the HD fails, the HDs are gone and you can't re use them?

I read some of the explanation on what raid 0 is, but im still not quite sure about tht

thanks/

 

[michaelahess]

If one drive of a RAID0 fails, the data on the array is toast, not the other drive, and possibly not either drive as the array might have just become corrupted destroying the data, not the drives.

If you do JBOD with 3 HD's and one drive fails, you can still get the data that was stored on the other two, but there is no performance increase.

 

[adrenalin]

So you cant even format the failed HD and use that HD? aw that sucks.

 

[michaelahess]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. If the drive fails, like "click-click, oh my god this pos is broken", then no. If the array fails, then yes you could rebuild the array or just format the disk.

Unless something physically fails on the drive you can always reuse it.

 

[adrenalin]

Okay, Thanks alot.

Can I Raid ANY of the two SAME sata HDs?? like the second link that k- has posted??

Should I get a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320gb

or

2x that Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80gb and raid

Which one will be faster? Like loading into windows?
I don't care about the space.

 

[Whizzard9992]

You can RAID0 ANY two identical drives, as long as the drive controller supports it. Just to be clear, if you have an SATA controller, you must buy SATA drives.

The drives SHOULD be the same manufacturer and brand. Technically, you can raid any 2 drives with the same sectors and such, but jsut be safe and get 2 of the same drive.

As for an array failing, that just means if 1 drive goes bad, you lose the data on BOTH drives. If the plug falls out or something, as long as the data is still good, you'll be fine. I've had that happen a couple of imes actually

RAID 0 is great though. Definately do it. Just make sure you back up anything important. I haven't had a drive fail yet, but just be safe

 

[michaelahess]

You can actually raid ANY two or more drives, even if capacities are different, and if you use nvraid you can span across ide and sata. If you have to different size drives, you will only get the space of the smallest on both.

Also if you use windows software raid you can span across anything, I have a huge scratch disk in a server running across scsi, ide, and sata drives.

But we should keep it simple, check toms hard drive guide for speed comparisons, any of the new .10 seagate's, samsungs, or western digital drives should be fast enough.

 

[Oldguy]

Raid 0 great for performance, but invest in either a big (500 or 750) internal or a decent external and back it up every couple of days. Sooner or later one of the buggers is going to go belly up and it sure is nice to be able to almost completely recover in a couple of hours

 

[Whizzard9992]

You can actually raid ANY two or more drives, even if capacities are different, and if you use nvraid you can span across ide and sata. If you have to different size drives, you will only get the space of the smallest on both.

Also if you use windows software raid you can span across anything, I have a huge scratch disk in a server running across scsi, ide, and sata drives.

But we should keep it simple, check toms hard drive guide for speed comparisons, any of the new .10 seagate's, samsungs, or western digital drives should be fast enough.

I agree, but like you said, you only get hte performance benefit of the smallest drive. You get better performance from RAID 0 if they're identical. It can actually slow down the array if the sizes are different, which defeats the purpose.

The same goes for spanning RAID 0 across IDE and SATA, and software RAID 0. I've yet to see software RAID 0 that actually performs decent.

 

[crusher]

believe me performance vs your data = your data wins so don't make a raid if you storage crucial information. The performance is good for loading and that things but you will not see an increase of your FPS.