alright, so i just ordered all of my parts and three of those parts are 2 60 gb 60 gpx hds and a promise fasttrak controller. Now i have no idea how to setup these three together since they're all oems and won't come with manuals, i don't even know what cables i will need. But upon reading some posts it seems that it's safer if i just return the controller and just setup a master and slave drive. What do you think. If this was your $2,700 what would you do? Raid 0 or raid nothing.
To RAID or not to RAID
- Thread starter Kaliman
- Start date
I would definitely setup up a RAID. Don't return the controller. Search the Internet for its manual. The Promise FastTrak controller is amazing. If properly setup it will perform up to 40% faster than an onboard RAID controller. Getting two hard drives of equal size and performance and not using them in a RAID is a waste of money.
yeah but if the controller fails or one of the hd fails than i loose everything right, because all the data is split into two. whereas with a single hd if it fails i can slave it to another drive and recover the data. Another question i have is...wouldn't it be faster keeping two seperate drives. I could use one to say play mp3s and one to play a game. Or i could install a game or download stuff on one while doing something else on the other? I just don't know what the best way to setup storage is and i'm unsure of the reliability of raid 0.....what's the likely hood of a failed drive?
yeah i was thinking of going raid, but i thought of what would happen if 1 of the drive failed or got corrupted. also my friend and i swap hdd to leech stuff off each other, but with raid u cant do that 
Hard drives don't just fail! They are designed to withstand a lot of constant reading and writing and even a bit of shaking. Since you bought both drives at the same time, if one drives fails, the other will probably fail too. If not, then one of the drives is defective and you should get a replacement. I've never worried about failing drives! I have a 6 year old hard drive that is still working perfectly! As long as you have a brand name hard drive, there is nothing to worry about!
The Promise controller I just got performs about 9% better (at a 33% memory performance loss) than my onboard HighPoint controller. And yes, I set it up right.
You'd have to put them on separate channels to have that kind of setup work, and you'd never see a difference in a game or for MP3s. Well, the game might load 1 second faster while the MP3s are playing. But overall system performance will be much better with a RAID 0.
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Quarter pounder inside
ok, so you're all pushing me towards raid, but i have one more question. I bought an OEM promise fasttrak, and although i know you all probably think that will be fine, what happens if the controller itself stops working, will that mean i loose everything in my drives, or can i just purchase another controller hook it up and everything will work fine?
Ok, I should have explained this. Sorry.
There's a setting on my KT7a-RAID called "Enhance Chip Performance". With that enabled, my memory is around 550, 600 and my hard drives are 32,000 (in Sandra 2001 Standard). With it disabled, my memory is at 350, 400 and my hard drives at 35,000.
Make sense?
Sorry, rereading that post I realize it was very misleading. Didn't mean it to be.
EDIT:
Sorry, forgot to say: with my onboard HighPoint 370 chip, I was getting 32,000 hard drive with 550, 600 memory.
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Quarter pounder inside<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by FatBurger on 08/06/01 03:53 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
There's a setting on my KT7a-RAID called "Enhance Chip Performance". With that enabled, my memory is around 550, 600 and my hard drives are 32,000 (in Sandra 2001 Standard). With it disabled, my memory is at 350, 400 and my hard drives at 35,000.
Make sense?
Sorry, rereading that post I realize it was very misleading. Didn't mean it to be.
EDIT:
Sorry, forgot to say: with my onboard HighPoint 370 chip, I was getting 32,000 hard drive with 550, 600 memory.
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Quarter pounder inside<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by FatBurger on 08/06/01 03:53 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
Hmm, I'm not sure about that. But I doubt the controller itself would fail. It doesn't have any physically moving parts and it isn't as strained as RAM and the CPU for example so it won't fail. By the way, is it just me or are you a very pessimistic person?
Hehe, yeah, I mean, it's a waste of money to have two similar hard drives on one computer without the use of RAID. The hard drive is one of the computer's most major bottlenecks, and you have a chance to somewhat relieve that bottleneck and you ignore it? Adding RAM and a hard drive RAID are the two best ways to speed up disk intensive tasks such as video editing. Promise produces the finest controllers, so don't worry about failure. Trust me, you won't be sorry. You know when you restart the computer and the My Computer window takes a second delay to open the first time you try it? Or the first time you open a huge game or program and it takes a while to load? It's bottlenecks like these RAID will improve.
one more thing, how should i backup my files, some people say they have another single drive that they use for backup, what exactly do they backup, the most i'd probably ever want to back up are my mp3s and documents, would you suggest just burning these? So i would hook both drives to the controller as master.......is there any advantage to having a 3rd drive in raid 0, i'm already spending enough money as it is, and i'm definitely not going to buy another hd unless it's for backup purporses, but please tell me that there wouldn't be a large difference with 3 instead of two.
one more off topic question......i'm getting a Lian-Li pc-68 case with the system and i was wondering if it was possible to install more than 3 hds because it comes with 3 hidden 3.5" and 3 not hidden 3.5" i can put the hds in any of those bays right? thanks
Spdy_Gonzales
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- Mar 9, 2001
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If all you will have on your computer are some document and MP3 files why do you need RAID 0...to save a few seconds loading the operating system? I think RAID 0 for the typical home user is an over kill. You would be better off with RAID 1 so that you have automatic backup of everything. Just my 2 cents worth. Your decision.
You would be able to put at least 5 HDD in the Lian Li case, maybe more in the 5 1/2" bays if available.
<font color=green>I wonder...what is the speed of gravity!<font color=green>
You would be able to put at least 5 HDD in the Lian Li case, maybe more in the 5 1/2" bays if available.
<font color=green>I wonder...what is the speed of gravity!<font color=green> Booting Windows is annoying! What happened to the old days of DOS when a PC would boot in less than 20 seconds? That proves that a computer's most pronounced bootleneck is the hard drive. Anyone know how long Windows takes to load with a 4 drive RAID?
Lars_Coleman
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- Feb 9, 2001
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Would you rather your system boot you to a C:\ prompt instead of a GUI Interface that windows provides? You could either have an all black screen with a C:\ or you could have this ... hmmm, I think I would rather have this! What about you? Maybe Microsoft can do something like Linux. Have the option to go either way!
Once you boot up your smooth sailing as long as you have a solid machine and are running some form of Linux. Windows is too unreliable!
<font color=red>"Can you deal with that!"</font color=red>
Once you boot up your smooth sailing as long as you have a solid machine and are running some form of Linux. Windows is too unreliable!
<font color=red>"Can you deal with that!"</font color=red>
Right, it proves it's the bottleneck when it comes to loading Windows (it loads a lot faster on my RAID), but it won't help your frame rates one bit. It also won't help this thread to load faster. It's not the biggest overall bottleneck, but it's the bottleneck in loading/saving times.
There's no real way to compare one drive vs. 4 drives, unless you install Windows with the exact same options and programs. That's relatively easy, but you can't ask someone else with a 4 drive RAID to compare to your single drive.
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Quarter pounder inside
I'm not just talking about games! I do a lot of other stuff on my PC such as CAD and programming. Try opening a large AutoCAD 2000 drawing on a slow 5400RPM hard drive. Try again on a Dual 7200RPM Hard Drive RAID. A HUGE difference. It could take up to 20 seconds to open a large 100+ MB complex technical drawing on the 5400RPM drive but only a couple of seconds or so on the RAID. Same goes for compiling large Apps. They take very long because each file is loaded separately, processed and in the end all converted to a binary executable. You need a fast processor and hard drive to do that at a reasonable speed (5 seconds or so). But it could take up to 4 times longer on a 5400RPM hard drive. So will RAID 0 make a difference? Yeah, unless you're using your system as a game machine alone, you WILL see a difference in apps. The larger and more complex the program is the more speed you'll gain.
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