RAID 0 or RAID 1 in Laptop?

glynf

Hi all,
currently buying a new laptop
this .
Instead of the 100Gb (5400rpm) HD, I'm going for two 60Gb (7200rpm) HD's.
Rock are giving a RAID 0/ RAID 1 option, or no RAID. The sales guy admitted he was not fully up to speed on the subject, and the depth of my knowlage about raid is, RAID= more speed, less reliability.

So:

1;Is there much of an increase in HD acess speeds with RAID?

2;How stable is it-and what can go wrong with a RAID setup?

3;This machine will run hot enough, 3.6 P4 and MR X800, is 2 HD's pushing it,Should I risk it?

I have untill mon.to decide, if I order any later, no Delivery until the new year.

Any help with this would be really apreciated,

Thanks,
G.

BloodBath

Raid 0 basically halves all data from each file onto each hard-drive in blocks of a certain size. When the data is being read it is read simultaneously from each hard-drive which effectively almost doubles performance. Loading times for windows, games ect will be much shorter. Both your hard-drives will read as one 120gb hd which you can partition if you want. The only problem is if that one hard-drive fails you lose all data. Most hard-drives are pretty reliable these days though.

Raid 1 copies the entire file to both hard-drives. You get the faster access times like Raid 0 but you only have half the space so you would only have one 60gb HD. If one hard-drive fails you will still have all your data though.

I've been using raid 0 for the last year without a hitch so far.


BloodBath

Capt'n Midnight

It will run hotter - hard drives produce heat.

Raid 0 means if either drive dies then you loose everthing on both drives.
faster ? - don't know, don't care I've seen too many dead drives.

Raid 1 means the drives are mirrored - you will only have 60GB but if one drive dies then you should not loose data. read speed could be faster than one drive since it can read from either drive - but AFAIK that's only with a dedicated intellighent RAID controller. write will be slower since it has to write on both drives, the cache on the drive should minimise this

Seperate drives - many people do this - split the OS /swap file / program files / data areas. If they were on one drive then the head would have to seek all across the drive.

Is it sw or hw raid - as this affects performance a lot.

glynf

RAID 0 sounds good, I will be using it for work as well, but I could back all that crap onto a CD/DVD..

Captn Midnight, i think the sales guy said it was "Hardware Serial ATA RAID" ?

Is the separate drive option the safer bet ?

stuey

awesome laptop but at 5.5kg would you call it portable. It'll way a tonne

glynf

LOL. laptop is a stretch, but its the GPU i want it for.

jessy

I read an artical on AnandTech about a month or so ago and they BM 74gig Raptor and 2x 74gig Raptors RAID 0, in theory the Performance should be double but they could only get ~5% increase in real world BM's. Just something to think about. so maybe the 2 60gigs with no RAID is the best option.

Its a very very sweet spec(even got the full sized keyboard).

glynf

Thanks for all the help all. 2x 60Gb.Drives its going to be.

Stephen

Two hard drives is going to rape your battery as well, but it looks as if this is more of a desktop replacement than a mobile machine, so maybe that doesn't bother you.

BloodBath

I read an artical on AnandTech about a month or so ago and they BM 74gig Raptor and 2x 74gig Raptors RAID 0, in theory the Performance should be double but they could only get ~5% increase in real world BM's. Just something to think about. so maybe the 2 60gigs with no RAID is the best option.

Its a very very sweet spec(even got the full sized keyboard).

That's with raptors, it's a lot higher with normal 7200rpm drives. I notice my loading times are much faster than someone with a similar spec but no raid. My performance is near 2 raptors raided, a friend got 2500 in a benchmark while I got 2200. One 7200rpm hd will score around 1200-1300.


BloodBath

vishal

in that same article anandtech said that even with two 7200rpm drives there is no reduction in loading times. they said that when people experience a reduction in loading times it is mainly a placebo effect. there are synthethic benchies that will show the difference but no real world test will show the diff. your better off with 1 gig of ram

Canis Lupus

jessy wrote:

I read an artical on AnandTech about a month or so ago and they BM 74gig Raptor and 2x 74gig Raptors RAID 0, in theory the Performance should be double but they could only get ~5% increase in real world BM's. Just something to think about. so maybe the 2 60gigs with no RAID is the best option.

Its a very very sweet spec(even got the full sized keyboard).

I agree, I've read two articles one of which I reckon was the one mentioned above. In a home user environment RAID does VERY little to improve performance. Your better off sticking to 2 non RAIDed drives.

Does anyone have the link to that article on raid cos I lost it and have been wanting to show a mate who is convinced RAID is better?

glynf

This ?

Capt'n Midnight

stuey wrote:

awesome laptop but at 5.5kg would you call it portable. It'll way a tonne

http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20041115/holiday_guide-18.html

Under the hood, you can get a Pentium 4 3.6 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM, using the four DIMM slots. The 9860 can take up to two Serial ATA hard drives and up to two optical drives. A 7-in-1 memory card reader is built into the side. For network connectivity, the 9860 has gigabit Ethernet, and optional Wifi and Bluetooth modules.

his monster unit will definitely break your back at more than 12 pounds for the unit and 2.5 pounds for the power supply.