3 Disk RAID0 - Good or bad?

[technology-sponge]

OK, so I've got 3x WD2500KS and I plan to put them into a RAID 0 array. Is it worth it considering the added latency?

(The disk stats are on the THG Disk Charts)

My specs -
3x WD2500KS (250GB, SATA2, 16MB Cache)
E6600
GA-965P-DQ6 w/ ICH8R
2GB DDR-800 5-5-5-12 2T

Basically, I'm going to do a Matrix RAID. The first volume is ~60GB RAID0 with a 32 or 64K stripe. This is for windows.
The second volume is ~690GB RAID0 with a 128K stripe for storage.

I know RAID0 doesn't always improve performance, but for my case, I'm convinced it will - I do a lot of audio editing and CAD/Software work. The RAW audio files i work with are approximately 1.2GB in size each and I often play around with ISOs and Xvid movies. Not to mention the 10 minute long boot time on my PC from all the crap I have on startup. Its also handier for me with a large volume, instead of multiple smaller ones. Thats my opinion anyway.

So is it worth it?

BTW, to backup the 2 arrays, I'm using a 750GB ESATA disk. The 60GB windows volume gets imaged with ghost daily, the 690GB storage gets synchronized on a 24hour time delay.

 

[nukemaster]

There is not much point in raid for storage unless your storage is uncompressed video. Not saying you should not do it, after all you have the drives so why not....

3 drives will be FASSSSTTTT

looks like you have a good backup plan. But will ghost image a raid volume? Last time i tried it did not see it at all....

 

[technology-sponge]

There is not much point in raid for storage unless your storage is uncompressed video. Not saying you should not do it, after all you have the drives so why not....

3 drives will be FASSSSTTTT

looks like you have a good backup plan. But will ghost image a raid volume? Last time i tried it did not see it at all....

Well "storage" is a bit loosely defined. I'm using the volume for the audio/video editing as well.

Ghost does support RAID - but not all levels of it. It can handle 0, 1, and 5, but not exotic levels such as 2, 3 or 6. It also doesn't like nested array such as 0+1 or 10.

Ghost 12 definitely supports RAID though - i had a 20 minute long bitch with customer support over that.

 

[nukemaster]

good to know....i guess i know what i am going to go pick up next time i am in the store....Does it need the raid driver disk or anything. Is this from windows or a DOS/Linux boot cd?

 

[technology-sponge]

Well once you install Ghost inside windows, you can create a custom recovery disk, and it'll scan your pc for drivers it doesn't already come with, or you can specify drivers to be included manually. So yes, you will need the drivers for RAID.

BTW, if even if you've used ghost 2003/8/9, I'd take a look at Ghost 12 first, as a lot has changed since the days of DOS ghost. All of the imaging is done within Windows now, and you can do file backups as well. The recovery disk no longer allows you to create images, as people abused that. The disk can only verify/restore images, but it can scan for viruses, do a disk check, and edit MBR etc etc. There's also LightsOut restore - it adds a Vista style boot manager, so you can load up ghost without using a recovery disk.