SATA or ATA RAID 0

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
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J

John

I currently have two IDE-100 (WD 8Mb cache) HDD in a RAID 0 array. Will I
see any performance enhancement or degradation if I switch to a single
SATA-150 drive ? MoBo is an ASUS P4S8X.
 
I currently have two IDE-100 (WD 8Mb cache) HDD in a RAID 0 array. Will I
see any performance enhancement or degradation if I switch to a single
SATA-150 drive ? MoBo is an ASUS P4S8X.
Click to expand...

RAID 0 can be limited by your OS installation, your memory, the type of
controller, etc... There are to many things to say yes or now.

RAID 0 offers twice the failure rate and no fault-tolerance, do you
really need RAID 0? Chance are that you don't really need it and don't
really notice the performance increase.

RAID 0 only offers increased write performance, RAID 1 has the same
level of read performance as RAID 0.
 
RAID 0 can be limited by your OS installation, your memory, the type of
controller, etc... There are to many things to say yes or now.

RAID 0 offers twice the failure rate and no fault-tolerance, do you
really need RAID 0? Chance are that you don't really need it and don't
really notice the performance increase.

RAID 0 only offers increased write performance, RAID 1 has the same
level of read performance as RAID 0.
The raid O failure is double against hard drive failure only,data corruption
will kill both drives in raid 1, hard drive failure is very slim with the
drives made today,i havn't had one fail in my raid set ups for over 3 years.
DOUG
 
I've noticed a huge difference. The levels in my video games load about
twice as fast. To me that is a big reason I got it. I would play
Battlefield 1942, and other people would already be playing the next map
while mine was still loading from the hard drive. Now I'm about the first
one there. Doesn't help much with boot-up though. That extra time it takes
to search for the array takes away any speed advatage on boot up for me.
But, I will never go back to a single drive again.

I've even heard of a quad SCSI RAID controller for consumer use. You could
have 4 15,000RPM hard drives on one array. Now that would be fast as hell.
Can't remember who makes the computers with them, but first saw it in a
computer magazine. There made for gamers with money to burn.
 
RAID 0 can be limited by your OS installation, your memory, the type of
controller, etc... There are to many things to say yes or now.

RAID 0 offers twice the failure rate and no fault-tolerance, do you
really need RAID 0? Chance are that you don't really need it and don't
really notice the performance increase.

RAID 0 only offers increased write performance, RAID 1 has the same
level of read performance as RAID 0.

The raid O failure is double against hard drive failure only,data corruption
will kill both drives in raid 1, hard drive failure is very slim with the
drives made today,i havn't had one fail in my raid set ups for over 3 years.
Click to expand...

Doug, while I don't doubt your experience, I've installed many drives
(read that as just under 1000) in the last few years, and maintain a lot
of the systems those drives are in. I can assure you that today's drives
are no more reliable than the ones made 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 years ago.

Bad drives run in batches - a vendor will try something new to cut costs
and issue a string of bad drives. It takes about 4 months before we
determine that it was a bad batch and by that time the vendor has
corrected the problem, but we discontinue using their drives for about 8
months or more.

All forms of RAID are susceptible to data corruption by the users,
deleted files, etc... RAID 0 offers measurable increases in WRITE
performance against a RAID 1 array. Neither offers a measurable
difference in reads.

In most cases, people are not going to be impacted by data corruption
any differently when using ANY form of RAID, so most people don't bring
it up - it's not something that RAID impacts.

On the other hand, people building RAID 0 arrays sometimes get confused
and thing that because it's "RAID" that it somehow means a redundant
system and protects the data - this is not the case. In fact, you have
twice the chance that a hardware glitch/failure will render your entire
drive system unreadable/useable.

In the case of a mirror (RAID 1) if I have a drive fail and take out the
array, I can almost always install another drive, boot from it, and then
read data on the remaining array drive. In the case of RAID 0 I would
loose everything.
 
I've noticed a huge difference. The levels in my video games load about
twice as fast. To me that is a big reason I got it. I would play
Battlefield 1942, and other people would already be playing the next map
while mine was still loading from the hard drive. Now I'm about the first
one there. Doesn't help much with boot-up though. That extra time it takes
to search for the array takes away any speed advatage on boot up for me.
But, I will never go back to a single drive again.
Click to expand...

If you were using a Mirror (RAID 1) you would likely see the same thing
- since loading a MAP is almost all READS, the mirror would provide the
same performance and you would benefit from a redundant drive system.
I've even heard of a quad SCSI RAID controller for consumer use. You could
have 4 15,000RPM hard drives on one array. Now that would be fast as hell.
Can't remember who makes the computers with them, but first saw it in a
computer magazine. There made for gamers with money to burn.
Click to expand...

Actually you can get a Quad, Six, and Eight drive IDE controller for any
PC. The SX6000 is a nice controller and I've used them many times.
Performance can exceed some SCSI based RAID arrays with the right
drives.

I've been working with the new SATA RAID controllers in small servers.
I'm very impressed with the performance I see so far.
 
RAID 0 can be limited by your OS installation, your memory, the type of
controller, etc... There are to many things to say yes or now.

RAID 0 offers twice the failure rate and no fault-tolerance, do you
really need RAID 0? False
really notice the performance increase.

RAID 0 only offers increased write performance, RAID 1 has the same
level of read performance as RAID 0.
Click to expand...
 
False
Click to expand...

Nice, you should have added space to the post (I added one for you).

So, since you seem to know more than people in the IT business, what is
the level of failure for keeping your data striped (without parity or
mirror) across two drives?

I'll give you a hint, the actual failure rate, with total loss, is
actually higher than 2:1, but it's easier for people to understand 2
drive = double the fault rate.
 
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