RAID 0 storage

[ptizz]

Hi all. I'm new to RAID and can't seem to find an answer to my question. I guess i should figure out if I understand this right. If using two 160gb HDD's, RAID 0 will write to both drives and read from both drives simultaniously there by improving read/write times. Right? And if I have this right will both drives amount to only 160gb combined or will there be access to all 320gb in a RAID 0 configuration.

 

[sminlal]

RAID 0 can improve transfer rates, but it won't improve access times. So typical random-IO-intensive tasks like booting and starting applications won't be a whole lot faster.

 

[ptizz]

so would what would RAID 0 improve then?

 

[sminlal]

As I said, it improves transfer rates. That will help when you're doing large file copies, or if you use programs that have to read or write large files. Examples might be editing video or RAW files from a digital camera.

Note that video playback doesn't require a fast disk. Video files are large, but the data rate required to play them at normal speed is actually pretty low.

 

[pepperman]

It is true that RAID 0 will speed up large file transfers, the other drive would have to be RAID 0 (or SSD) to take advantage of the speed.
There are drawbacks to RAID 0, though, such as when one drive fails, the RAID fails. If this is meant as back up storage, you might want to consider just keeping these drives as JBOD, or if you can part with half the storage, RAID 1 in case of failure.

 

[ptizz]

Was looking for increased load times I was under the impression that thats what RAID 0 did. So I'll just leave them alone. Is there anyother way to speed up load times? other than buying a SSD? My wife would kill me if I spent more money on computer parts. lol

 

[pepperman]

^Defrag your partition (Defraggler is a good option), empty your recycle bin, delete temp files, and remove spyware/malware. After that, you can reformat your partition and reinstall your OS if its still slow (make sure you back up files before doing this!).

 

[sminlal]

If you already have the two 160GB HDDs, then you can probably gain a little bit of performance (but don't expect miracles) by putting nothing but the OS one one of them and short-stroking it to keep the access times down. You do this by creating only one small partition on the disk and installing the OS into it. For example, if you partition your 160GB disk down to, say, 50GB then you'll probably keep the access arm within something like the first 1/5 or so of the tracks (the outer tracks have more capacity, so the outermost 50GB is contained within fewer tracks than the innermost 50GB). Since the arm will never have to move beyond that range, it should reduce seek time.

 

[ptizz]

Cool thanks all