RAID 0 for boot drive or storage drive for max performance

[MigLMart]

I was hoping someone with experience building high end workstations would have some good advice for me.

I am building a high end workstation at work (Dual 2+ Ghz CPU, 4 GB Ram) to run a math intensive application. I am planning on having a boot drive and a storage drive and either of these may be RAID 0 or RAID 1. RAID 0 and 1 are the only option (at this point) and I would like to maximize application performance. Which drive should be RAID 0 to maximize performance?


If this was being used as a file server I would lean towards using RAID 1 for the Boot drive (for redundancy) and RAID 0 for maximum data access speed. Since this workstation will be focused on using one particular math intensive data analysis application I am thinking that RAID 0 on the boot drive (where the application is at) will maximize application performance. Any thoughts from the local RAID Gurus?

 

[BuffaloFan]

Greetings my friend,
I am in areement with your latter thoughts of using a RAID-0 for your boot and pplication drive, and another SINGLE drive for data.

I said this up above in a different post, but here it is again:
I DO NOT recommend RAID-0 as a data storage place. Been there, done that. Lost a lot. All it takes is to accidentally have something happen to a drive connection and you can lose it all. Once, I had a SATA connector come loose from a drive in a RAID-0 array that I was using as data storgae. I opened the case, found the loose SATA connector, but accidentally bumped the other one loose, too. I have been working inside PC cases for a long time, but call me dumb on this one because I could not tell, suddenly, which connector went to which drive. Using the bends in the cables as best clues, I hooked them up and turned everything on. You know what's coming . . . I had the connections reversed and lost all of the data.

Additionally: I had thought that saving my data to this RAID array would be so f-a-s-t! Frankly, There was no noticable difference, probably because data writes tend to be relatively small in size, and they are done before you know it.

Where I notoiced the difference in the speed of RAID-0 is in boot time, application start-up time, and loading new game data time, like when entering a new area for instance, and also when installing new apps.

best wishes,
mike

 

[MigLMart]

Thanks for the input. Application performance is the most important thing for this workstation, so I'll make sure that if the user (who will probably make the final decisions on the build) understands the benefits and risks of RAID 0 and the importance of a having a safe place for data storage. It's also good to hear that RAID 0 may not be as important for Application speed (Vs. Bootup etc). We've been leaning towards more CPU speed, Memory and highest Hard Drive RPM first and looking to add the RAID option to squeeze as much performance as possible out of the workstation. Thanks again,
Mig