To RAID or not to RAID

bagocans

Getting this laptop http://www.rockdirect.com/rockshop/shophome.php?itemprcd=XTI-3.4
I'm going to get 2 60Gb (7200) HDD instead of one 100Gb (5400) HDD, but i've been looking up the options for the configuration of the 2nd drive.
The options are no RAID, RAID-0 or RAID-1.
I'll be wanting the machine for graphics, animation, 3d, music and video editing and i was thinking of going for the RAID-0. RAID-1 seems pretty useless and i was thinking RAID-0 would be quicker than no RAID at all. Is there a point in getting raid or should i just leave it without?
any opinions?
thanks.

unkel

bagocans wrote:

Is there a point in getting raid or should i just leave it without?
any opinions?
thanks.

So you don't want RAID1. That leaves RAID0

There is very little improvement performance wise with RAID0 compared to non-RAID and you'll loose half your disk space. If you only need 60GB of space, save yourself some money and only get one 60GB 7200 HDD and forget about RAID

My €0.02...

stevenmu

In that situation,

RAID-1 will effectivly give you one 60gb drive, but if either physical drive fails you can carry on as if nothing happened.

No RAID will give you two 60gb drives, if either fails you will lose whats on it, but keep what's on the one that didn't fail.

RAID-0 will give you effectivly one 120gb drive that will be a decent bit faster than No RAID and RAID-1 but if either physical drive fails, you lose everything.

Which one to go for depends really on how critical your data will be, RAID-0 will give you the best speed and allow for huge files, both of which can be important for video, music etc, and you can(/should) always do nightly backups. If you can't handle losing your current days work, then go for RAID-1. If you don't want or can't be limited to 60 but need some level of fault tolerance and ability to carry on working go for no RAID.

edit: I'm assuming of course that it would be a hardware RAID implementation, you definitely do NOT want software raid.

JDxtra

RAID on a laptop! :eek:

bagocans

jdempsey wrote:

RAID on a laptop! :eek:

More of a desktop replacement, tis a big machine.
Thanks everyone, it looked like RAID 1 was pretty pointless cos i want 120gigs, and i know i'll lose everything with RAID 0 if there's a problem with one hardrive, but then again does this happen much and this would happen anyway if i had only one hard drive, was just wondering if it's really worth it getting RAID 0 or should i just leave it non RAID?

chump

Well I've never had a HD fail on me completely before. One had a bit of a hiccup and I had to use retrieval software, but that went a treat.

I've used I'd say 6 different HD's over the last 8-9 years.

In general if you take decent care, you should be OK, IMO.

JDxtra

Hard drives will fail. From past experiences I would estimate that 10% of DESKTOP hard drives fail within three years of usage.

Remember that this is a laptop - it's a portable system and as such is going to be more exposed to regular knocks no matter how well you look after it.

Personally I wouldn't go near RAID 0 in this situation unless you are not too concerned about the data or take comprehnsive & regular backups.

astrofool

you could just buy an external USB hard drive, and backup often. If something is critical, you really want a backup of it away from the machine you're working on. i.e. if the laptop got destroyed, or stolen, you'd still lose everything, even with raid 0

bagocans

stevenmu wrote:

edit: I'm assuming of course that it would be a hardware RAID implementation, you definitely do NOT want software raid.

¿Qué? , can you expose my ignorance?
think i'll go for the non raid anyway, don't think the little extra bit of speed will be worth the hassle!

stevenmu

RAID can be implemented in hardware, either with a RAID controller built in to the motherboard or an add-on card . The hard drives are connected to this, it let's windows see just one hard drive and when windows tries to read from or write to disk, the RAID controller handles what data goes on which disks. It can be also done in software where windows can see both your physical drives as they are, windows then decides what data goes on which disks which is much, much slower.

Capt'n Midnight

jdempsey wrote:

Hard drives will fail. From past experiences I would estimate that 10% of DESKTOP hard drives fail within three years of usage.

You're way off - I'd reckon only 3% a year *

*Not including bad batches - worst batch so far was way over 50% at year 3 - stopped count
*Not including the first month or anytime after 5 years - cos failure rate is even higher then

stevenmu

The odds of hard drive failure are directly related to the value of the data, the urgency with which you need the drive at that time and the amount of time since your last backup

edit: Oh, and they're inversly proportional to the amount of money you have available to repair/replace it.

JackieChan

The odds of hard drive failure are directly related to the value of the data, the urgency with which you need the drive at that time and the amount of time since your last backup

edit: Oh, and they're inversly proportional to the amount of money you have available to repair/replace it.

Stephen,
I reckon you have the basis of a PhD thesis there!