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Raid 0: A waste of money!

  • 22-01-2005 10:00pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,943 ✭✭✭


    Not sure if this has been posted before, but for all you people using Raid-0 in your desktops, you're wasting your time! And doubling the risk of losing all your data! The basic jist of it is that Raid-0 gives you no speed benefit in real world applications if you're a regular desktop user/gamer. In benchmarks the max boost was about 30%, but in actual real-world applications the max performance boost was 3%.

    Is 3% in some applications worth losing all your data if one HD dies?

    Anandtech Raid Benchmark linky


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,891 ✭✭✭Jammer


    i find os loads and game loads are much, much faster.

    dont care about losing data, i have an IDE for anything important...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,943 ✭✭✭Mutant_Fruit


    Well, the benchmark pretty much proves that there is no faster loading times. Check out the game loading times benchmark. No difference when you compare a raptor to two raid-0 raptors. Less than a second (if any difference).

    Did you ever time the load times before and afterwards? Cos its highly likely you are experiencing the "placebo effect", e.g. you THINK it should go faster, so you percieve it to go faster...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,553 ✭✭✭✭Dempsey


    I seen that article ages ago Mutant_Fruit, about a week after I put two raptors into a Raid 0 array. Windows loaded significantly faster (before SP2), no placebo effect there.

    I was disapointed with Video encoding, no real improvement in the encoding time but my computer can run at 100% CPU load and still feel as if its completely idle.

    If you want raid, get a PCI controller that can do Raid 5. Onboard RAID isnt useful compared to its cost for the regular pc user. There is a mediocre benefit to users that be very hard on computer resources everyday.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,943 ✭✭✭Mutant_Fruit


    I would have been surprised if video encoding was affected by having a raid, simply because a modern harddrive can sustain at least 30MB/sec transfer, and i don't think any computer is fast enough to encode 30megabytes a second.

    Ok, so windows does go faster (personally, i doubt it, but have to believe ya). But games have no benefit, encoding has no benefit. Other benchmark linky.

    The only scenario where i think you'd get the benefits of Raid-0 would be if you were capturing very high quality video, i.e. if you were writing well over 30MB/sec.

    Raid-5 or Raid-1 however i can see the benefits of. Cheap enough to implement for normal users, and provide redundancy to keep those files safe. I can't seem to find any benchmarks showing that raid-0 actually does improve performance in real life, the only improvements seem to show up in benchmarks.

    As for the CPU being at 100% and computer feeling as if it was idle, isn't that slightly irrelevant? All that means is that the process taking 100% of your CPU is probably at less-than-normal priority, wouldn't it?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,259 ✭✭✭Shiny


    Ha

    I read countless articles about raid also and i am completely
    happy with my SATA RAID setup.

    Yes load times are faster as i deleted the array and then installed
    battlefield, not messing, i played it 5 times and the load times
    were annoying me so much that i rebuilt the array.

    Also I transter huge files onto my computer several times a day and
    the array proved excellent for such work ie transfering videos, TV
    Series (9gigs) etc....

    I alway treat my array as something that could die at any minute
    hence I rarely have critical data lying around on it.

    I love my raid.
    :D


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,553 ✭✭✭✭Dempsey


    Ok, so windows does go faster (personally, i doubt it, but have to believe ya). But games have no benefit, encoding has no benefit. Other benchmark linky.

    I timed windows loading and it was significantly faster compared to when I didnt have it in a raid setup.

    CPU Load maybe a little irrelevant but when it wasnt raided, responsiveness wasnt as good when I was encoding, thats why I mentioned it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,346 ✭✭✭✭KdjaCL


    Windows XP pro with 30 processes took 2 minutes 11 seconds to load on IDE
    On Sata 0 takes 46 seconds
    MOHAA level loads were 11 seconds now 4.
    Defrag used to take 40 minutes on 40GB IDE takes 11 minutes on 120Gb Sata
    Doom 3 over a minute level loads now under 30 seconds.

    Thats just my pc, dunno how they came to the conclusion that it wasnt faster.
    And as above i have the IDE for important stuff.


    kdjac


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,165 ✭✭✭✭astrofool


    winstone and the like are more testing of CPU/Ram performance than pure hard disk. Your hd only needs to be so fast when saving a word file, or retrieving emails.

    The time RAID comes into play, are as people said, loading windows, or loading a level in a game, anything that requires a glut of data from the hard drive really, in which case it will make a significant difference for those few seconds. Thats what people pay the extra for :)

    Its a bit like hyperthreading on p4's. No real use in most benchmarks, but a system with hyperthreading can be "snappier" when opening multiple apps (this should get ALOT better with proper dual cores). Its not something thats quantifiable, but the difference is definitely there, as with RAID hard drives most of the time.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 698 ✭✭✭vishal


    i would personally believe anandtech although i guess it depends on the sata controller or ide controller


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,761 ✭✭✭Col_Loki


    I also agree with what most of the people are saying, when my Samsungs were in a Raid0 i noticed quite a difference, especially with load/transfer times. Now that i have them in normal setup it can get annoying, thus the reason ill be getting a raptor.......

    The article in AnandTech is dealing with Raptors which are already fantastic performers , and raiding such drives wouldnt give as much performance benifit as Raiding 2xSeatgate 120gb / 2xSamsung 160gb .....

    Think i remember raptor single getting ~60mb/s , Raid0 ~80mb/s
    Samsungs ~30mb/s , Raid0 ~56mb/s

    There just rough as i cant remember exactly, but from regular drives you were achieving performance levels close to a raptor and you were getting all the storage space aswell...... I wouldnt rule out Raid0 , but if you have to weigh it up against data loss, and also take into account if your switching your hardware you might loose your data (ie switching controllers) - thats why its always best to buy a PCI controller so you can bring the array with you to an upgrade.

    [edit] And PS you cant possibly be wasting money if your buying regular drives becasue you are getting the same level of storage space. The waste of money is only a factor if your Raiding Raptors........


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,165 ✭✭✭✭astrofool


    if you're switching hardware you're really better off reinstalling. Data loss wise, you're stupid if you only have your information in one place, whether its raided or not.

    Personally, my data is not THAT important, but I still have a backup hd, a portable hd, and have a degree of redundancy with files across the network (it'd be really annoying to have to re-download alot of the stuff :))

    Best performance right now is probably the 250/300gig maxtor drives with 16 meg cache, raided. Raptors just can't compete price/performance wise.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,761 ✭✭✭Col_Loki


    if you're switching hardware you're really better off reinstalling. Data loss wise, you're stupid if you only have your information in one place, whether its raided or not.

    Yea i agree, but if say its backed up to DVD.... having to load back on >200gb of stuff would be a nightmare, if you have a PCI controller you bring that with you and no loading. Definetly re-load the OS but the rest of the stuff doesent need to be re-loaded.
    Best performance right now is probably the 250/300gig maxtor drives with 16 meg cache, raided. Raptors just can't compete price/performance wise.

    Ohh now thats sweet!!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 807 ✭✭✭ViperVenoM


    yes i can say them 16mb drives are very fast indeed as i have 1 :D

    its perfectly fast enough for me since ive never seen a raid set up in action i cant comment but i wont bother with it i know that :p


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