The good speed that is RAID-0

[Saxito Pau]

Over the weekend I finally decided to try out RAID in my system


WARNING: Despite the fact that RAID= Redundant Array of Independant Disks, RAID-0 has NO redundancy!!! If one drive fails you lose everything on all drives! Be sure to have at least a 3rd drive for your data if you're not going to use better RAIDs like 1, 3 or even 5.

It so happens I have two identical Hitachi 250GB SATA drives and so I backed up all current data on them to my 500GB and set to work.

It's not too hard (though the instruction for you particular motherboard may vary slightly):

- Enable RAID globally  in the BIOS
- My motherboard allows me to set individual SATA ports (6 I have) in either RAID or IDE mode
- Save BIOS changes and reboot
- press key required to enter RAID BIOS when prompted. select RAID-0 or striping as the type you want to enable. Add the desired drives and you're set.
- Have ready your raid diskette. You'll need to install the RAID drivers it when installing windows (press F6 to install additional storage drivers)

Immediately you'll see how much faster your windows installation goes.

As a demonstration of speed see below a comparison: My single Seagate 500GB vs RAID-0 500GB

HD Tune: ST3500630AS Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 38.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 57.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 54.7 MB/sec
Access Time           : 13.0 ms
Burst Rate            : 154.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage             : 2.4%


HD Tune: NVIDIA  STRIPE   465.77G Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 34.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 98.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 87.4 MB/sec
Access Time           : 13.3 ms
Burst Rate            : 84.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage             : 6.4%

The RAID-0 array show an almost 60% increase in average Transfer rate. Trust me, when you see how fast software installs (from a hard drive file) and load time for games and software, you may wonder how you got b with a single drive.

RAID-0 added a clear 1000 points to my PCMark05 score

If you do plan to implement this, my absolute least suggestion is 3 drives: 2 identical ones for the RAID and the 3rd for your data

[Arcmanov]

Very interesting indeed.  I will obtain 2 identical drives and try this out whenever I decide to reinstall XP (or upgrade to Vista).
Raid 0 is great for gaming, but I must admit, I 'fraid it bad' for home usage.  The cost and time overheads are kinda steep.
Not to mention TTEC's 'stellar' service.  I hope you have a boss UPS protecting that setup.

I need a motherboard with about 6 SATA headers though to properly implement a Raid 0+1 setup.

[W1nTry]

I once had a long discussion with a then regular techie on GATT (cyah rem his name now O_O) about the benefits of RAID. I was for, he was more indifferent, the discussion pointed out that for larger size or block transfers or those into higher volume data movement (those in video editing that sorta thing) would see a more dramatic increase in performance as opposed to the average user. Now personally I did see a slight improvement in loading times and the like so yes I would say it does help. Also there was an article posted on GATT comparing RAID0 with normal 7200RPM drives vs 1 Raptor @ 10k RPM. Obviously there is nothing to compete with Raptors in RAID0 however RAID0 normal drive showed very good comparisons to their elder Raptor bredren.

It is extremely important the 'disclaimer' at the top of this thread as there is no redundancy and/or parity without which reclaimation of your data should 1 of the drives in the RAID0 array fail would be impossible. There are other variations of RAID that support these features namely RAID1, 0+1, 5, 10. Most consumer Mobos only support RAID0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives). Also unfortunately RAID0+1 is the MOST wasteful of all the RAID configurations as it will REQUIRE a minimum of 3-4 HDs if memory serves me correct and you lose quite a bit of space.

I had an unfortunate experience with RAID0... well not so much the RAID itself but rather my mobo at the time failed and thus I had a striped arrangement and no way to access the data until the replacement mobo was delivered. I still have 2 identical Hitachi 80G SATA I drives which were part of the original RAID0 config. But they are in different machines now. Perhaps on my visit abroad i'll get myself some relatively cheap SATA 3.0 drives and try again I do have 2 SATA ports doing nothing after all.

[Nephilim]

Didn't want to create a whole new thread so I'll just stick my question in here, it has to do with raid anyway...

Whats a good card to invest in, never bought a raid card before thinking about getting so i can setup a raid 1 config, but would like to know what cards you guys have best experience with.

I'm looking for: RAID 0/1 (0+1 maybe?), 2-4 sataII ports, PCI/PCIe, Good Chipset and under 100US.

sax u using the mobo raid controller?

[Arcmanov]

Never had any experience with RAID cards, but from all reports/reviews I have read, all new motherboards have
on-board RAID controllers that are quite competent, and actually negate the need for an add-in card.

In Sax's case, he is using the on-board RAID controller in the BIOS.

[Saxito Pau]

Most recent motherboads (as far back as socket 754/478 me thinks) have a built-in RAID option, so you shouldn't need to get a RAID controler card.

Even a cheap socket 754 Via-chipset motherboard like the MSI K8MM-V or Biostar K8M80-M7A has support for RAID 0 or 1 on its SATA ports.

I am using the RAID controller on my system (Oh, the godness of a workstation mobo: 6 SATA + 1 IDE on nvidia, 3 SATA + 1 IDE on Marvell)

What arc said....

[W1nTry]

As good as onboard RAID controllers are, anyone who's dabbled into the server market will tell you add ins are better. You see onboard aren't as efficient as add in and there is inherent overhead on ur CPU with onboard. But we're really talking about the desktop consumer market, so for the most part the onboard will suffice. Also another benefit of an add in, is SHOULD crap hit the fan and ur machine crashes (mobo, cpu, video, etc) you could install the card and ur HDs onto another machine and retreive data... and its easier to get a replacement add in should it go belly up, if the RAID controller on ur mobo die... ur screwed.

[Nephilim]

Can't use an onboard raid controller,I'm using an intel board, no frills 
But stable
W1n, pointed out a fact that appealed to me also, the fact that if board go I can swap the card out into another machine and use my stuff.
Looking at some cards now...

[Saxito Pau]

Well, my RAID-0 array failed yes!!

One hard drive went bad. It was something that I was expecting to be quite honest. For about a month I had noticed that one of the drives (before I tried out the RAID) had sudden deteriorated performance: so bad a flash drive were performing TWICE the speed of the hard drive!!

Initial diags could not ID a bad drive... so you can say I pushed it over the edge with RAID. Array crashed right after an install of Vista. The next reboot showed an error in the array.

Attempts to low-level format the drive finally gave the desired fail error needed to prove my warranty case.

I am still not daunted.... as soon as I get me a Seagate 160GB SATA identical to my current one, back to RAID-0 again!

As for personal data, nothing lost as all was stored on two other drives.

[Arcmanov]

This is why I fraid running Raid-0 (by itself) so much.  If I have to, it MUST be a 0+1 array.

[Spazosaurus]

Sax, your messenger name should now change from "Today I discovered the power of RAID0" to "Today I discovered the power of RAID 0 to bite me in the @ss"

[Prowl]

Sax, your messenger name should now change from "Today I discovered the power of RAID0" to "Today I discovered the power of RAID 0 to bite me in the @ss"

lmao!

[Saxito Pau]

Sax, your messenger name should now change from "Today I discovered the power of RAID0" to "Today I discovered the power of RAID 0 to bite me in the @ss"

LOL..... like I said, it was inevitable for that to happen as I had marked the drive as suspect to fail well before I implemented RAID-0.

I'm going back with it again... never fear. I'm actually looking forward to faster speeds still with 2 known working drives..

[Prowl]

ok, now let me re cap, you put a suspect drive into a raid 0 set up and expected it not to fail? and when it did your going to do it over again?


ok makes sense.

[Saxito Pau]

ok, now let me re cap, you put a suspect drive into a raid 0 set up and expected it not to fail? and when it did your going to do it over again?


ok makes sense.

LOL.....
yes, I put the suspect drive in RAID
yes, I expected it to fail. You could say I used RAID to force the drive to fail...
yes I am going to do it again when I get a new drive. Good experience to gain as a techie. Hell, I have FOUR hard drives totalling over 1TB. Obviously my data and backups will be sotred/done on the other two (or three) drives..


I came across some interesting articles:

Why RAID is (Ususally) a Terrible Idea

A StorageReviev.com article on single drive vs RAID-0