Thread: RAID 0

this may be my utter lack of understanding about RAID but..

i got a pair of 750gb SATA drives and installed VISTA 64 on it. I went into RAID config and defined it before installing Vista and it does show up as a single drive.

the "problem" is that it shows as a 1400gb drive instead of a 750gb drive. i thought all data was mirrored therefore i shouldn't have any more than 750gb avail. is this right? did i miss a step?

in addition to Bunni...

RAID 0 you will see higher speeds but striped data...therefore you will reap the benefits of combining both disks on a space perspective, hence why you see 1400Gb drive..BUT if any one of them fails you lose ALL data.

RAID 1 you get the redundancy of mirroring your data but the speed slows. Therefore you'll see 750Gb and all your data is replicated (mirrored) to the other 750Gb drive.

I use RAID 1+0 for my media storage (pics, movies, music, etc) provides the speed of RAID 0 and the mirroring of RAID 1, but you have to use at least 4 drives.

Originally Posted by K0nTANK3Rous

in addition to Bunni...

RAID 0 you will see higher speeds but striped data...therefore you will reap the benefits of combining both disks on a space perspective, hence why you see 1400Gb drive..BUT if any one of them fails you lose ALL data.

RAID 1 you get the redundancy of mirroring your data but the speed slows. Therefore you'll see 750Gb and all your data is replicated (mirrored) to the other 750Gb drive.

I use RAID 1+0 for my media storage (pics, movies, music, etc) provides the speed of RAID 0 and the mirroring of RAID 1, but you have to use at least 4 drives.

You should look into RAID 5, if you're going with that many drives. Distributed parity ftw.

right..but I like the +'s of RAID 1+0 better than 5.

I get to double my drive capacity plus have it mirrored. In 5 you only get the size of ONE of the drive in the array plus the goodness of parity...i guess it's personal preference. Either are good though.

whew.. i thought i'd have to start from scratch..

and cool i got 1400gb!

so striped means that if you write 2 files, it'll write them on 2 separate drives. when you need to read those 2 files, it'll read from both drives at the same time, thereby increasing the the read speed. is that right?

Somewhat slower write speed, faster (minimal) read speed. You won't see 2x increase by any means.
Remember if one drive fails, you lose ALL DATA.
And defrag will take longer as well: 1.4 TB

I personally didn't "see" any improvements in games, however, when a DATA intensive application accesses HDD, like Photoshop, there should be a small increase you might "see".
Also faster load times for maps should be a plus for some games.
Benchmarks should show the improvements, but those are synthetic, what you experience in difference will be small if any change.
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-in...leDriveVsRaid0
I went back a single SATAll drive, and shelved my PCI RAID card.

Orig. Quote:
"so striped means that if you write 2 files, it'll write them on 2 separate drives..."

Not just write one file to one drive, and one to the other, rather, 'pieces' of each file are written to separate drives.
The RAID controller determines what goes where, and remembers where it puts them, that's why you run the risk of DATA loss in the event of a failure. Windows doesn't "know" where the DATA is, it relies on the controller for that information to find what Windows requests.
One file may be on one drive and one on the other, or; both files could be on one drive, but more likely, pieces of both on both.
Is this a software RAID? meaning, is it the onboard RAID controller on Motherboard?
That is a weak controller at best.
If you are serious about running any RAID, get a Hardware RAID card (PCI, or equivalent), which actually has it's own BIOS, just like your PC has.
Either way if RAID fails, everything is lost.
Are you going to use up that much space on HDDs? 1.4 TB?
That's a lot of video/music.

blu-ray rips are 12Gb and up...fyi

so that space gets used up pretty quick if you store all your movies in digital on your media PC.

I also have alot of flac and ogg files from concerts and those tend to run into the Gb's too..so while 1400Gb may sound like a lot...it's not...

but to elaborate on my previous post...RAID 0 is NOT what i would recommend at all..it's way to risky. Striped with parity RAID 5 is best from a corporate/enterprise standpoint but requires more disks, mirrored is ok but slow by itself.