What RAID has Quickest Speed (Write&Read) Possible with 4 Drives?

[ahthurungnone]

Okay, I've got four hard drives to setup a Minecraft server. I am not concerned with space, and I will backup as required. I need the fastest setup possible. What do y'all suggest? Thx.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Oh, I forgot. I still want to be able to withstand the loss of 1 drive just in case.

 

[leandrodafontoura]

Raid O

simple as that...dont do any other

 

[Branden]

leandrodafontoura, RAID 0 won't withstand the loss of a drive, as ahthurugnone requested, but would actually be 4x more prone to it.

RAID 5 would be fast and can withstand one drive failure.
RAID 0+1 (or 1+0) would be fast and can withstand two drive failures.
can't honestly say which of the two would be faster.

 

[singemagique]

Fastest = RAID0 but it has no redundancy.

A lot depends on the controller you will use. If you are getting a dedicated RAID card I would probably lean towards RAID5. It's fast, can withstand 1 drive failure, and gives space = N - 1 (where N = number of disks).

What RAID controller you looking at?

 

[fancarolina]

I would suggest 0+1 for your array. Raid 5 is an attractive option but you'll find that the throughput is slow due to parity calculations. If you backup your data and are willing to deal with rebuilding if something fails I would go with Raid 0 for the best performance.

You can't have the best of both worlds without some sacrifice be it speed or capacity.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Can I have 3 or 4 hard drives set at RAID 0? The last time I tried, the mobo would only allow 2 drives on RAID 0. Here's my mobo...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131734

 

[Branden]

theoretically you can put as many HDD's as you want in RAID 0, but some mobo's have a limit, can't say if your's does or not.
RAID 0 will NOT withstand the loss of a drive!

your mobo supports RAID 10 (1+0), that may be the best way to go.

 

[WyomingKnott]

If you want to survive the loss of one drive, RAID0 is poison. Listen to the previous posters who recommended 0+1 / 1+0. Build two two-disk volumes as RAID1 mirrors. Then RAID0 the two volumes together. RAID5 uses intensive parity calculations and can be disappointing unless you have a controller with dedicated parity hardware.

 

[x Heavy]

I had 4 raptors (The old 150's enterprise) on raid 0 years ago. One drive quit and brought the entire system down hard.

I bricked the motherboard and it required the equivalent of shock paddles (Shorting pins) to get it back. Then go through each drive until I found the one that had died. I have three left. Those are no longer in raid, just individuals.

I use raid 5 now.

 

[fancarolina]

What kind of throughput are your looking for and or expecting from your array?

I run a RAID5 array of 4 Samsung 1.5TB Green drives on a Highpoint 2640x1 under Server 2008. I generally get 40-60MB/sec with bursts as high as 100-120mb/sec. Take in mind these speeds are based upon how fast the drives on the other end of the network are. In most cases I used SSDs in order to see what the HDDs max throughput was.

 

[x Heavy]

I am not sure who your question is directed at but I will take a stab.

My Vertex 3 SSD's in raid 0 (2 drives) or Raid 5 (Three or more) should give me at least 1 Gig read and damn close to that much in write. It will take a Revo to defeat that.

I recall my raptors gave me about... 150 or so back in the day. Quite respectable considering it was SATA 1.5 back then.

You will need a Raid controller and up to 8 SSD's to get into several thousands of write or read speeds.

 

[fancarolina]

I am not sure who your question is directed at but I will take a stab.

My Vertex 3 SSD's in raid 0 (2 drives) or Raid 5 (Three or more) should give me at least 1 Gig read and damn close to that much in write. It will take a Revo to defeat that.

I recall my raptors gave me about... 150 or so back in the day. Quite respectable considering it was SATA 1.5 back then.

You will need a Raid controller and up to 8 SSD's to get into several thousands of write or read speeds.

I wondered if the Sandforce 2000 based drives were really that much quicker in RAID0. I'm currently running 2 Corsair F80 drives in RAID0 and I get in the 500mb/sec range. Are your Vertex 3 drives on an SATA2 or SATA3 controller?

 

[x Heavy]

I wondered if the Sandforce 2000 based drives were really that much quicker in RAID0. I'm currently running 2 Corsair F80 drives in RAID0 and I get in the 500mb/sec range. Are your Vertex 3 drives on an SATA2 or SATA3 controller?

It's going to be the SATA 3. They are literally on the brown truck on the way as I type this.

 

[ahthurungnone]

So should I setup the drives as just Raid 10 or use the two step process of creating two Raid 1 array with two drives each and then creating a Raid 0 array of the two sets?

 

[fancarolina]

So should I setup the drives as just Raid 10 or use the two step process of creating two Raid 1 array with two drives each and then creating a Raid 0 array of the two sets?

I have not set up an array like that before but I would think you should be able to choose 10 and set it up all in one step.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Best answer selected by ahthurungnone.

 

[Hovaucf]

leandrodafontoura, RAID 0 won't withstand the loss of a drive, as ahthurugnone requested, but would actually be 4x more prone to it.

RAID 5 would be fast and can withstand one drive failure.
RAID 0+1 (or 1+0) would be fast and can withstand two drive failures.
can't honestly say which of the two would be faster.

Well to be most accurate, RAID 10 can only sustain two drive losses if the drives in question aren't in the same span. Additionally RAID 5 requires 3 drives minimum and RAID 10 requires 4 fyi.

 

[Hovaucf]

leandrodafontoura, RAID 0 won't withstand the loss of a drive, as ahthurugnone requested, but would actually be 4x more prone to it.

RAID 5 would be fast and can withstand one drive failure.
RAID 0+1 (or 1+0) would be fast and can withstand two drive failures.
can't honestly say which of the two would be faster.

Well to be most accurate, RAID 10 can only sustain two drive losses if the drives in question aren't in the same span. Additionally RAID 5 requires 3 drives minimum and RAID 10 requires 4 fyi.

 

[Hovaucf]

leandrodafontoura, RAID 0 won't withstand the loss of a drive, as ahthurugnone requested, but would actually be 4x more prone to it.

RAID 5 would be fast and can withstand one drive failure.
RAID 0+1 (or 1+0) would be fast and can withstand two drive failures.
can't honestly say which of the two would be faster.

To be most accurate RAID 10 can only sustain two drive losses if each drive is in a different span. RAID 5 write speeds will be determined by what hardware (mobo/raid controller) is calculating the parity for writes, but will be faster for reads.