To RAID-0 or Not To RAID-0

[mrfatbox]

was thinking about going down the RAID road with my rig and was wondering what people think is best RAID-0 or RAID 0+1(This is what i was thinking)
or is there a better option
advice would be well recived befor i go spend £150 on 3 more new drives to make the 4 needed for 0+1
and could some one tell me how RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0/10 differ please.

 

[tomatthe]

Raid levels described in detail here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

You need to post the explanation for what you are trying to accomplish before you can really get any advice. Do you need read speed, write speed, redundancy etc.

 

[mrfatbox]

my way of thinking is that i want to increase overall driver proformance and lower the risk of data loss hence the 0+1 but RAID is just not my thing so i might have this all wrong

 

[mrfatbox]

or as a new plan what about using RAID-0 on the main sytem drive
and setting up a second RAID-1 drive set for data strorage

would this give me the best proformance on the system drive and Redundancy on the stored data drive

 

[GeoMan]

Raid 0 is for if all you care about is maximum speed at the cost of data security. RAID 1 and 0+1 have the same problem in there's no way to check which copy is correct if one of them gets corrupted. Ideally for speed and data security what suits most people best is RAID 5. Faster read speeds, the ability to check parity and redundancy with less relative space loss compared to RAID 1, but at the cost of higher I/O and potentially slower write because of setting up parity.

 

[mrfatbox]

ok then so can i have 2 raid setup on the same system at the same time

system drive runing applications and games RAID-0 (at high chance of a problem and a shorter drive life i am guessing)
and
a storage drive for long term data storage on RAID-5

taking me to needing 5 drives inall

do the 2 say 500GB drives in RAID-0 give 1TB or does it reduse like raid-5

sorry to be a bit clueless as i said this is not my thing till this morning could have told you what RAID-5 did but that was about it

 

[vood00child]

Another option is go down RAID 0 with the two drives, use this as both main and storage for all your needs. Then slot in a third drive, either internally or externally to use as a simple backup drive, and having the 2 copies of your data this way. Its not automatic redundancy, but it's simple and maybe will do the job ?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

As was said up top, it's necessary to know the application before accurate advice can be given. RAID 0 will benefit you in database access, huge spreadsheets, video editing, CAD rendering and a few other specialized apps. For everybody else, all its going to do for you is getting you bragging rights for good benchmark scores.

If you need data redundancy, and in reality who doesn't, RAID 1 is a viable solution. For most data control situations an NAS presents a very convenient alternative and it easily performs the same job for multiple boxes. All data can be kept on the NAS with images of a standard "programs drive" as well as individual boot drives for each machine on the network, making cold metal restores a cinch. Many proprietary RAID formats will even allow ya to do rebuilds and expansions on the fly via "Hot Swap". It's also rather "portable" and the joke in my SOHO is that in case of fire, I can grab the NAS handle and run .... and after the data is safe come back in for the any employees, wife, kids, etc.

If your concern is only "one box", RAID 1 provides data redundancy.....but so do other alternatives .... i.e. tape / optical, cloud backups ...... RAID 0 , again unless you have specialized applications, will serve no observable benefit other than nice benchmark scores.

 

[GeoMan]

Whether you can have more than one RAID array is dependent on your RAID controller, but it shouldn’t be a problem for anything designed since vacuum tubes were all the rage. For a system with a RAID 0 and 5 array you would need 5 drives minimum. Two for the RAID 0 and three for the RAID 5.

RAID 0 total storage is the simple cumulative sum of all drives in that array, so two 500Gb drives would make a 1Tb array.

 

[mrfatbox]

RAID-0 and a NAS Drive i think this is the way forward

 

[mrfatbox]

Best answer selected by mrfatbox.

 

[Dereck47]

RAID 0 total storage is the simple cumulative sum of all drives in that array

The total capacity of a RAID-0 array is based upon the drive in the array with the smallest capacity.
If you RAID-0 a 60GB drive and a 240GB drive the total capacity of the array will be 120GB (60GB x 2), not 300GB.
So it's best to use identical drives for maximum capacity and maximum performance.

 

[GeoMan]

The total capacity of a RAID-0 array is based upon the drive in the array with the smallest capacity.
If you RAID-0 a 60GB drive and a 240GB drive the total capacity of the array will be 120GB (60GB x 2), not 300GB.
So it's best to use identical drives for maximum capacity and maximum performance.

Fair enough, for some reason the thought of different sized drives slipped my mind.

It must be Monday or something