Redundant Question - Raid 0

[ghb70005]

1



I’ve read so many articles, many with charts to prove that raid 0 adds marginal benefits in real world usage.
Yet I also read many users claiming its greatness. (With no charts)
I understand the risk of failure is almost double.
Assuming it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they did poop out in 3years.

Would two WD raptors raid 0 give me a noticeable difference from one?
Will my boot time be shorter, will my programs load faster, should I return the second raptor to newegg when it arrives on Friday?

I don’t mind spending the money if its going to cut my load times my 40% but if its only 5% then its going back. Maybe I’ll just get one 150gb raptor.




1

 

[khaz]

The answer is: it depends.

What will you use it for? If your just talking games, maybe. Some (bloated) games faster loads on maps gives you an edge in multiplayer where the 3-4 seconds means something. Others you won't even notice the difference.

If you are talking media ie lossless encoding, vid capture, and steaming or otherwise transfering large files, then yes there is a real world difference as the real advantage of raid 0 is bandwidth improvement.

 

[ghb70005]

1

As an example:
What about loading up all the thousands of digital photos the significant other has taken (and all the gazillions prn files someone collected) into thumbnail view?
Or is this more of a RAM / CPU issue?



1

 

[khaz]

Well, you would have to go to actual read/writes for this discussion. In that scenario, 10,000 writes to a thumbnail file might be faster if you built your raid with small clusters (stripe size). However, in the encoding scenario you would prefer large clusters. Therein comes the trick ... you gotta know what you want to get out of it and be able and willing to test whether it works as well as you think! Many will argue raid 0 is not for the average person, and I believe this is the factor that makes that most true.

 

[niz]

1



I’ve read so many articles, many with charts to prove that raid 0 adds marginal benefits in real world usage.
Yet I also read many users claiming its greatness. (With no charts)
I understand the risk of failure is almost double.
Assuming it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they did poop out in 3years.

Would two WD raptors raid 0 give me a noticeable difference from one?
Will my boot time be shorter, will my programs load faster, should I return the second raptor to newegg when it arrives on Friday?

I don’t mind spending the money if its going to cut my load times my 40% but if its only 5% then its going back. Maybe I’ll just get one 150gb raptor.

1

I have two 150MB raptors in Raid 0, and yes the difference is noticeable. Moving large or lots of files around is painless and loading large levels (in games like oblivion) is very quick.

Trust me you will say wow when you experience it.

 

[chuckshissle]

2x74Gb Raptor in Raid0 124K Stripping, have given me faster boot and load times on my games, to mention BF2 as I get on the map before everyone else, I get to go around the corner first and place some claymores. Then, boom! I got the first idiot who ran into my trap. Makes me smile all the time.

Advantage. But most of all I did it to try for myself. I can agree that the money spent on this raid setup is not that good at all, when you compare it to a single regular 7200 rpm hard drive. Nonetheless it's faster from 0 to 15 seconds faster.

I'd say you try it for yourself and if you don't like then return it for a refund.