Thread: RAID 0

Originally Posted by Consultant

My thought was that having 2 HDDs with my data on them being dependent of one another doubled my risk of data loss due to a bad drive.

This is the single biggest problem with Raid 0 for a really good tutorial on RAID go here http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

Originally Posted by Consultant

I ran RAID-0 for years and when I re-built this last time I went away from it.

My thought was that having 2 HDDs with my data on them being dependent of one another doubled my risk of data loss due to a bad drive.

Other kinds of RAID are designed for data redundancy and security like 0+1 (I think I remember that correctly) but that calls for 4 drives setup in a pair of RAID-0 arrays.

The performance boost is just for read/write speeds which in-game only affects load times and even at that, I don't think it cut them in half or anything like that.

Waiting 35 seconds for a map to load isnt THAT different than waiting 20-25 seconds when you consider that if just one of those RAID-0 drives goes belly-up, you lose everything.

That is all very true but for as i said "being a gamer" means i play an array of games. It wouldnt just be for the 35 to 25 sec wait in bf2142. Although as is, i load in less than 10 seconds in bf2142. Its the simple fact of using both drives to there fullest potential, to get the most speed out of anything you do. I think if i was doing something other than gaming like programming or something that required allot of time using the HD's, i would benefit more.

It does pose a little threat to loosing all info once one HD craps out but most if not all that i have is on a disk somewhere.

The way it generally works to set up a RAID array is thus:

1. Put drives in, connect power and both data cables, ensuring they end up on the same controller (should be easy if you only one controller).

1a: Find the drivers that are necessary for installation, and follow the instructions given (usually to copy onto a floppy disc).

2. Turn computer back on. You might have to enable the controller by going into BIOS and looking in the peripherals section.

3. When the RAID controller BIOS screen comes up (after POST), hit the button to enter the controller setup.

4. From here, there should be options to set up arrays. Set up a RAID 0, striping size (usually automatic), and then add both of the drives you want to use. Both drives will be initialized, which will erase them.

5. When doing a NEW Windows install:

When you enter setup, the status bar at the bottom will say "Press F6 if you need to add a third party controller driver" or very similar. Press button! The setup will continue loading itself, and then at the end, you'll be prompted to insert the disc you made in step 1a and install the drivers so that setup recognizes your controller, and thus your new array. Then continue installation as you normally would.

*** Notes of caution:

Windows is absolutely retarded when it comes to working with partitions and setting up mount volumes. If you have both IDE hard drives AND SATA drives, the IDE controller is recognized as device 0, and Windows absolutely, positively must format and install at least a ghost reference to the boot volume on the first drive on device 0, no exceptions. If you use an IDE hard drive for backup (like I used to), you have to disconnect it fully, disable it in the BIOS, follow the above procedure (so that the SATA controller ends up being device 0 at setup), then reconnect, and reenable it in BIOS. Then Windows will behave properly.

This is due to the way that Windows looks for the boot volume, and is yet another example of crap coding.

*** The Straight Skinny on RAID 0

RAID 0 should, technically speaking, double your access rate (either read or write). In practice, it does significantly speed up read performance, while write performance gains are fairly average. What it can also do is improve your burst reading by combining the cache on the two drives. Most access you do while gaming is read-related.

RAID 0 does not halve your drive life. From a statistical standpoint, a 2-drive RAID 0 array has twice as many opportunities to fail compared to a single drive, which should mean relatively twice the number of failures over a period of time. What it generally means in the real world is "backup your really important shit and stop worrying so damn much". Most drives nowadays have MTBF's of 100,000 hours anyway (or about 11.4 continuous years of service).

Draco

can't find out to delete this