RAID0 or Dual SATA Raptors?

[RaidWeary]

Hello
I just bought dual 36GB Raptors and was thinking of the different setups i could configure.

I am a big gamer...Running XP Pro
so which would be better?
1 10GB partition with Windows and 60GB Partition for Apps and Games on 2 SATA Raptors in RAID0

or
2 SATA with the OS on one and games on the other
i will also be putting my swap file on another HDD on a different IDE channel.

 

[grafixmonkey]

When I had my Raid-0 installed, I did notice that game levels loaded three times faster on my computer than they did on a faster, but single drive, computer. Those Raptors are already twice as fast as a single hard drive though, so you'll already have levels loading 2x speed. I say go for 4x speed with the raid-0, with a 'but...'

If you use Raid-0, it becomes a lot more difficult to move your hard drives around. You can't unplug them and stick them in another system unless the other system has the same brand raid controller. You also have twice the likelihood that your "drive" will fail - if one drive goes bad, all data on the Raid-0 is lost. Unless it's just bad sectors. Then you can recover the files not effected by bad sectors, as long as the controller doesn't start hanging up and going offline because of them. You usually have some kind of warning before a drive dies, if it has SMART installed and/or you scan it every now and then. A Raid-0 with two small Raptors should be fairly easy to back up, you only need an 80 or 100 gig drive to do it. (that is a problem with very large raid drives - how do you back it up? there aren't any 800 gig drives for backing up a 4x200 raid-0!)

 

[jim552]

I would use them as separate drives.

OS/Swap File on one
Games on the other

You likely won't be able to utilize the drive space quite as efficiently, but it does provide more options in the future.

You DON'T want to put your swap file on another drive. Keep the swap file on the Raptor drives because they are going to be considerably faster than any standard IDE drive.

 

[JP5]

I imagine the sort of person who buys 2 Raptors would also be the sort of person who would put them in a RAID. Go for it

 

[Vapor]

I certainly did .

Maxtor disgraces the six letters that make Matrox.

 

[arkus]

Me too... well 4 actually.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by arkus on 02/06/04 09:05 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[hogfather]

How risky is RAID 0 in reality? Because I have had this HDD for 1.5 years, and zero problems, is it likely to fail with RAID 0?

XP2000, 256ddr 2100ram, GF4 MX440, XP Pro

 

[silverpig]

It's no more likely to fail in raid 0 or alone. Your ARRAY is twice as likely to fail though as it only takes one drive to lose your data. The raptors have a 5 yr warranty though, so you're still safe.

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

 

[sjonnie]

It's not risky at all because you have all your data backed up somewhere.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[grafixmonkey]

Yeah the Raid-0 probably isn't very risky with drives that have a 5 year warranty. It's just that the data on your Raid drive is twice as likely to be lost as if it was on a single drive.

Here's two cases, Raid-0 with drive failure, and two single drives with a drive failure... With the raid-0, all data goes away and is probably unrecoverable (well, maybe you can, with difficulty). With the single drive failure, half your data goes away and can be recovered with a drive recovery tool. So really if one of your drives is going to fail, raid-0 is just about the same risk as two single drives.

Then, I start thinking about other potential problems, including the raid controller not being the best, and maybe having issues. My raid solutions have all had major problems. I think that's because I bought them from Promise, but who knows. My raid-0 had this problem that saving a bunch of files to it over a network crashed the system and left a "weird file" on the drive that would crash it again if you opened it, and my Raid-5 drive just randomly sent itself into degraded mode for no reason whatsoever.

But, if it works properly, raid-0 is very very nice. Just don't install your OS onto it. Use it as a secondary drive.