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Geek Culture / is raid 1 really a preformance drag

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evil stuff
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 11:17
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well as some of you may remember from my previouse posts, I'm building my computer and now I am going to have a extra $400 to spend so I'm thinking of doing raid. my mobo is a msi k8n neo platimum (not sli) and I have two samsung SpinPoint P Series SP1213C 120GB but might get more. I was thinking of doing a raid 1 for both hdds (will get to more for raid) because on hdd is for linux the other for windows. does raid 1 really effect preformance on sata150? i will be doing some gameing like star craft (love that game) and possibly halo. the mobo has the nvedia firewall built in w00t so somethings are possbily avoided. should I just to raid on windows due it's cost so I could protect its stuff?

may the code be with you
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Dazzag
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2005 20:21
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Why do you want RAID 1 BTW? Mirroring is fine, but you lose HD space and speed will be effected. Don't forget it will format to the size of the smallest HD. So if you use a 400gb and a 120gb then you will end up with a 120gb HD with mirroring. Plus obviously it will run at the slower drives speed.

Personally I have RAID 0 with 2 SATA 10k Raptor drives. They are only 70 odd GB each, but I end up with a superfast 150gb ish drive. Bloody expensive though. I originally ordered 2 250Gb drives to get a half a terrabyte RAID 0 array, but they were slower and not SATA. Actually cost a fair bit less than the Raptors. Got to love that performance boost though. And I wasn't bothered about mirroring, as I can always back up to one of my other computers, DVD writers, or bung in a separate drive for backups in the future. For me it was performance most of all.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
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evil stuff
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 08:03
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I want raid 1 so that I can back up windows if something bad happens (happens alot ) and because this should have to last me for a wile, it would be better for raid 1. I'm trying to figure out how bad the preformance lag is, and if it cripples games like halo in load times and stuff. with raid 1, everything that is recorded would take 2X the time. in raid 0 it splits it in half, but it doubles chance of getting completly screwed. I have 2 120gig hds that I can use, but will probebly get to more for raid. and does anybody know of a web page that you can find how many watts you need for your computer to help find a power supply?

may the code be with you
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Neofish
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 08:16
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As he said two identical drives will just act like 1...if you have a slower or smaller one than the other, the smaller one will be the primary one

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IanM
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 08:16
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Raid 1 is mirroring. Mirroring does not give you a backup. It gives you resilience if one of the disks crashes, speeds up reads, and slows down writes.

Most I/O is reading from the HD, so you get a performance gain.

If you want to keep a backup, then keep your disks separate, use the first one for all files, and make a backup to the second.

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evil stuff
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 11:32
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this book i have describes raid 1 as a way to prevent data lose. aka less likly the data will currupt like from a disk error. i would have a raid 1 set up with two 120gig hds meaning I would have 1 hd. my main question is: is it worth having a raid 1 set up, and will it effect game preformance (halo, doom3, etc)?

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Dazzag
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 19:39 Edited at: 3rd Jun 2005 19:40
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Of course it will effect performance. But I wouldn't worry too much. As to preventing problems, then it depends. Because *everything* that happens to disk 1 will also happen to disk 2 (because it is a mirror), then anything bad that comes from, say, a virus or adaware, will also happen to disk 2. You will *still* need to use a backup to get it back to a previous state. Once the RAID 1 is installed it will look like a single 120Gb drive. What RAID 1 should protect you from is if one of the drives crashes because of a hardware error. The other disk should be fine (unlucky if both go wrong) and you can carry on with that until you replace the other drive. But my point is how often do you get a HD hardware crash on modern disks? If you get a lot then do you move your computer around a lot or live in a really dusty area or something?

Personally I use RAID 0 for performance, then backup onto another HD every now and then. With the price for a new HD being stupidely low, then this isn't an issue.

As to PSUs, my machine started rebooting randomly a while back, and I tracked this down (web searches) to the PSU not handling things (new GPU, RAID 0 array etc, all in a week). PSU was something weedy like 250. Got the highest I could get, and got a 650 watt gold plated 3 fan effort (not that noisy) just to be safe (lots of peripherals). Works fine now. Cost about £45 from Dabs with next day delivery (£30 without), so hardly breaking the bank.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
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IanM
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2005 22:00
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Quote: " less likly the data will currupt like from a disk error"


Nope. If your system writes crap to one disk (for whatever reason) and not to the other, you may get the good data one one read, and bad data on the next, because which disk the system reads from is outside of your control.

IMO, mirroring is almost useless for home systems. Unless you absolutely have to keep up and running through a disk crash, then there's no point to it.

If you are determined to use the raid controller on your motherboard, use Raid 0 (striping). If not, keep the second hard drive for backing up to.

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Dazzag
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Posted: 4th Jun 2005 01:15
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Quote: "If you are determined to use the raid controller on your motherboard, use Raid 0 (striping). If not, keep the second hard drive for backing up to."
Yep. RAID 0 is best for home use, with some decent storage on another drive With the added advantage that you basically get *all* the storage space from the 2 drives. Whereas RAID 1 basically reduces the storage to only the smallest drive size. If people are so bothered about having to install everything again, just have a scheduled process to back up the whole lot every night to the 3rd (not part of the array) drive. Or go nuts and get a RAID 0 array with like 8 drives Was considering a 4 drive array of my 10k Raptor drives. Basically would give about 300Gb , with 4 drives running at 10k. Fair enough, doesn't exactly quadruple speed (I'm not quite running at 20k with 2 drives for example), but should be pretty close, depending on the size of the stripes. So probably a 300Gb 35k+ equivelent drive. Drool....

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
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