Is western digital Raid Edition HD, worth it?

[paztelu]

Hi, Im planning on building a new computer, but Im stuck with a the decision of buying the hardrive, Im looking foward buying 2 drives for working them in Raid 0, for better performance. I mostly leave my computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Turning it off sometimes when its really necessary. So my concern wheter I should buy which of these HD:

1.Western Digital Caviar RE WD1600YS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136062

2.Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144415

Is raid Edition drive worth it? I really care about data security, but is buying a Raid edition drive to much? should I consider buying the Standard drive, or do you recommend me other brands that are very reliable for Raid Use.

 

[BustedSony]

Hi, Im planning on building a new computer, but Im stuck with a the decision of buying the hardrive, Im looking foward buying 2 drives for working them in Raid 0, for better performance. I mostly leave my computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Turning it off sometimes when its really necessary. So my concern wheter I should buy which of these HD:

1.Western Digital Caviar RE WD1600YS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136062

2.Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144415

Is raid Edition drive worth it? I really care about data security, but is buying a Raid edition drive to much? should I consider buying the Standard drive, or do you recommend me other brands that are very reliable for Raid Use.

The RE and RE2 are really reliable drives as such, with a MTBF of 1.2 million hours. (The SE is less than that with a very slight history of bearing failure) but the Raid features, 8-second dropout eg. are only applicable to Raid 1 or 5. Raid 0 INCREASES the chance of loss, I would recommend against Raid 0 except for a video capture drive or something being used for transitory data. You want two REs in Raid 1, now THAT'S security!

 

[Dante_Jose_Cuervo]

Overall there isn't too much of a difference. The only big difference between a regular HDD and a RAID HDD is the fact that the firmware is designed for better data integrity. But even that isn't too noticable.

 

[misry]

Got 2 of those RAID0'd in my primary home system. Very pleased. Movie conversion was cut by a third just moving to RAID0. I set less than 1.5 feet from the system and can hear the drives but the person on the other side of me can't.

Don't forget 16M v. 8M cache and a 5 year warranty.

 

[atp777]

Got 2 of those RAID0'd in my primary home system. Very pleased. Movie conversion was cut by a third just moving to RAID0. I set less than 1.5 feet from the system and can hear the drives but the person on the other side of me can't.

Don't forget 16M v. 8M cache and a 5 year warranty.

RAID 0 as I remember doesn't have any fault tolerance either, so you lose one drive and you lose all your data on a RAID 0 config as well.

 

[paztelu]

Thanx, I will consider buying the Raid Edition when possible. But about data security BustedSony said, the primary use for those HD's are stuff like Video, Music, Games. Stuff that is not very important, so in the worst case I will replace that information easily. Still In my old PC I had 2 Maxtor IDE 5400rpm 40gig on raid. they lasted 1 year with no failures on Raid 0.

 

[BustedSony]

Thanx, I will consider buying the Raid Edition when possible. But about data security BustedSony said, the primary use for those HD's are stuff like Video, Music, Games. Stuff that is not very important, so in the worst case I will replace that information easily. Still In my old PC I had 2 Maxtor IDE 5400rpm 40gig on raid. they lasted 1 year with no failures on Raid 0.

Just because two drives are being used for one Mount doesn't mathematically double the risk of failure in a given time span. If a drive is going to go due to manufacturing flaws then it happens early on. If it's a matter of age then one or the other will fail after X-number of years, with the other due to go around the same time period. The problem is that having two drives doubles the AMOUNT of data that is lost, with a 50/50 chance of the the age-related failure being moved up a bit.

I used two IBM GXP60 60 gig drives for four years as a Raid 0 capture drive.. Upon retirement of the editor one of the drives has found a new career in a server working 24/7, the other was fried by a bad external box but the data was recovered by borrowing the controller card from the other.