Raid 0: Worth The Hassle?

[ren0nie0]

I'm about to embark on my first build. I wanted to get your opinions on the raid 0 setup. Is it worth hassle? I get the feeling the perfomance increase is insignificant...

 

[antichrysler]

No.

 

[Doughbuy]

Hassle-wise, its not too much. Setting it up is a bit troublesome, but nothing too difficult. The performance gain you get in Raid 0 varies, anywhere from 1-3% or so depending on what you do. But the real hassle comes from when one of your HDD's dies. Then you'll be tearing clumps out of your hair and cursing everything in general because you just lost 2 HDD's worth of information.

Your choice man, I'm still going to do it, but I want every last bit of performance no matter what the cost...

 

[bmouring]

I get the feeling the perfomance increase is insignificant...

Unless you plan on working regularly with large ammounts of contiguous data, you are absolutely right.

 

[ren0nie0]

I don't think i'll do it know... I do alot of audio intensive stuff... It's too troubling to think that I could lose BOTH drives if one fails for 3% performance increase that wouldn't really affect FPS on games.

 

[antichrysler]

I like my response better. It's smaller and more efficient.

 

[SockPuppet]

I'm about to embark on my first build. I wanted to get your opinions on the raid 0 setup. Is it worth hassle? I get the feeling the perfomance increase is insignificant...

I've got 2x WD 160gig 16MB cache sata in Raid0. It's friggin awesome. Cold boot to desktop ~20 seconds. All my games load and start nearly instantly and I'm always the first one in the map on server change. MMO games benefit alot because of the streaming nature of the game engines.

I dont who's ass the 1-3% got pulled out of - but you can shove it back due to inaccuracy.

 

[antichrysler]

Are you a fan of mpjesse's avatar or what?

[/off topic]

Who's that? I know not of this mpjesse you speak of.

 

[WilliamT]

If you have the right number of drives and the data on those drives isn't critical. (i.e. you have a separate data drive), then I would say its worth it.

There is a great article on software raid that shows that with the right configuration, you can go from 30MB/s to 133MB/s if you have the drives to spare. (basically hitting the theoretical limit for a 133MB ATA drive). (3 drives on 3 channels)

"RAID Without Additional Hardware: Do It Yourself With Windows 2000"

http://www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/06/raid_without_additional_hardware/

If I were to do a RAID 0 configuration, I would probably have a program to automatically do image backups to the data drive.

 

[SockPuppet]

If you have the right number of drives and the data on those drives isn't critical. (i.e. you have a separate data drive), then I would say its worth it.

There is a great article on software raid that shows that with the right configuration, you can go from 30MB/s to 133MB/s if you have the drives to spare. (basically hitting the theoretical limit for a 133MB ATA drive). (3 drives on 3 channels)

"RAID Without Additional Hardware: Do It Yourself With Windows 2000"

http://www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/06/raid_without_additional_hardware/

If I were to do a RAID 0 configuration, I would probably have a program to automatically do image backups to the data drive.

Except you need 3 hard drives to set up software raid. One to put windows on and run then the 2 for the raid array you want to create. It's better to just put the drivers on a floppy and F6 them bastards on windows install.

 

[roncpem]

whats the rest of your rig

 

[SockPuppet]

3.2 P4 (e6600 on the way),Asus P5LD2 mobo, 2gigs of ddr2-667, and a 7900GT.

 

[choirbass]

I'm about to embark on my first build. I wanted to get your opinions on the raid 0 setup. Is it worth hassle? I get the feeling the perfomance increase is insignificant...

personally, i feel going with raid 0 is definetly worth it... reducing my raid 0 array from 4 raptors, down to a single raptor just earlier this week, has increased my load times drastically (i did it due to heating issues, poor overall airflow in my case), so everything in general takes considerably longer to load now (its quite annoying)... but, if youre able to, i would at least have a raid 0 array of 2 drives minimum

the hassles you mentioned only extend as far as backing up your data on at least a semi regular basis to a seperate location, external hdd, or whatever (as you would normally do anyhow)... and the slim, but still possible chance of hdd failure, thats just as likely with all hdds, raided or not... and all that happens then, is you would reinstall windows, and retrieve your backed up data, and youre all set again (whichcase, ill point out that it only takes about ~9 minutes to install XP in raid anyhow)

the 1-3% that someone pointed out is completely inaccurate, unless of course youre only loading files that are all under 50-100KB each or so, whichcase, the benefit of raid 0 is more negligable then (but still a benefit nonetheless, even with such small files), the only downside to the performance, is that your access times increase in an array with the more hdds you have, so youll add an additional 1-2ms or so of access time by going raid

the failure gripe that most people have with raid 0, really isnt an issue at all to be honest, especially if you back up your data, as you should always do anyhow regardless of whether youre in raid or not

im starting to really regret going with a single drive, i miss how fast the array was before... may just do that actually soon again, with at least a 2 hdd array anyhow... 1 is tooooo slow, lol... ...its like, also, the hdd is the slowest component in your whole computer, that youre almost always having to wait on... going raid 0 definetly helps to alleviate that issue

edit: almost forgot... stripe sizes... when selecting stripe sizes, you would do so based on the overall size of the files you would be working with... ...lots of small files = smaller stripe size... lots large files = larger stripe size... ...lots of small and large files = inbetween stripe size

for a windows partition, you would want a small to medium stripe size

for a gaming partition, you would want a large stripe size

 

[ZOldDude]

I'm about to embark on my first build. I wanted to get your opinions on the raid 0 setup. Is it worth hassle? I get the feeling the perfomance increase is insignificant...

I've got 2x WD 160gig 16MB cache sata in Raid0. It's friggin awesome. Cold boot to desktop ~20 seconds. All my games load and start nearly instantly and I'm always the first one in the map on server change. MMO games benefit alot because of the streaming nature of the game engines.

I dont who's ass the 1-3% got pulled out of - but you can shove it back due to inaccuracy.

20 secs?
I don't use raid and it only takes about 7 secs to load up to desktop on my system.

Try cleaning out the dead parts of your registry and then defrag it (the registry not the HD). Now it will boot faster....and even faster still if after the first reboot you then run BootVis.

 

[choirbass]

I'm about to embark on my first build. I wanted to get your opinions on the raid 0 setup. Is it worth hassle? I get the feeling the perfomance increase is insignificant...

I've got 2x WD 160gig 16MB cache sata in Raid0. It's friggin awesome. Cold boot to desktop ~20 seconds. All my games load and start nearly instantly and I'm always the first one in the map on server change. MMO games benefit alot because of the streaming nature of the game engines.

I dont who's ass the 1-3% got pulled out of - but you can shove it back due to inaccuracy.

20 secs?
I don't use raid and it only takes about 7 secs to load up to desktop on my system.

Try cleaning out the dead parts of your registry and then defrag it (the registry not the HD). Now it will boot faster....and even faster still if after the first reboot you then run BootVis.

im sure he also means though, going from his computer being off, going through post and all, waiting through the windows loading screen, to a fully loaded and usable desktop (with no hdd accessing occuring either then at that point)... it also depends on the amount of other hardware you have installed in your system too that has to be loaded as well... if you have no hardware installed or that needs to be loaded so to speak, windows can start up pretty quickly... but even with windows installed on an iRAM drive, 7 seconds is pretty quick then (especially if you have other hardware that need to be initialized first)... either or though

thats not to say that cleaning out the registry and defragging and stuff wont help... im sure it will, maybe get from 20, down to 16 seconds then... whoknows

 

[hatsurfer]

My 4 Raptors Raid 0 get 170 MB/s with the onboard NVraid drivers. I have considered getting a pcix SATA Raid card. The price is ~$300 and I would get nearly 300MB/s, but the speed I have now is great. I have noticed a hugh improvement in framerates going from 2 Raptors to 4 in my 3d games. I was able to max out on all settings where before I was held back somewhat on the highest graphic settings. I can copy large 1GB files without breaking a sweat.

I also upgraded from an killer(but now squashed by conroe) o/c Opty system to Conroe E6400. The combination of the 4 Raptors and Intel system gave me a hugh performance boost. I still use the same 7900GTX and I got a nice 30-40% boost in average framerates in the games I like to play. My girlfriend and I play together on-line and load maps at the same time. My toon is always ahead a second or two. She is now using my Opty system.

 

[Synergy6]

I'm about to embark on my first build. I wanted to get your opinions on the raid 0 setup. Is it worth hassle? I get the feeling the perfomance increase is insignificant...

If, by hassle, you mean "I've never tried it, but my mate Jimny says it's hard", then it's worth it.

If, by hassle, you mean "I've researched what's involved, know what's required, but it's really putting me off" then it's not worth it.

Synergy6