Raid or No Raid

[Kodiak]

Is it really worth the risk? What I mean is the more drives in the array the more you have to worry about and to be faster, as we all want, you have to be set up on Raid 0. It only takes one drive to go bad and your finished. I have raptors so there fast in themselves. The reason I worry is because I just had a disk error but I knew what it was but it still scares me. For some reason one of my cables fits loosely to it's connection and I have to wiggle it and it goes again and I have tried different cables and I get the same thing. Still the question is, is it worth it? Why not just hook the seperate? I do game but mostly on line and raid dosn't make online gamming faster. Pro's/Con's?

[Ya_know]

RAID for redundancy is good. Raid for Speed is stupid, unless you have the money to burn. If you do, you should have a redundant array for your important data, and a solid Ghost image of your raid zero array, so you can get it back up and running in 20 minutes if a drive does fail.

[CeeBee]

Is it really worth the risk?

How important is your data? If you don't mind losing it and the few % increase in peak write speeds are more important then go with RAID 0. Otherwise go with RAID 1. Or what Ya_Know said.

[RejectionMan]

combinations are the key.

OS and critical files on a RAID 1 array (or RAID 5, but as you said Raptors are realy fast) large, expensive, possibly slower drives can be afforded here (RAID 5 to compensate for slower media)

Temporary high speed access on RAID 0. Swap memory, video editing, ect. Use lots of small, fast, affordable drives here.

re Ya_Know: RAID 0+1 Very fast, very large, expensive, yet "safe" (usually high performance database, and $$ to burn.

I have even heard of crazyness like only using 25% of the disk so all the data is on the outside edge of the disk where preforamce is highest becasue the sectors go by faster and the seak area is smaller (crazy DBA's )

[RejectionMan]

also nothing beats a good back up

[Kodiak]

Is there a benchmark progy that will test raid and also test a normal set up to compare. I used atto to test a raid setup but it didn't seem to test non raid correctly. Read and write speeds were about 95000 to 110000 with raid.

[Kodiak]

Ran HDTACH and came up with 113mbs.

[ClickHere2Surf.com]

I have RAID 0 of 2 SATAs and it's definately worth it, it's not just a slight increase in speed, it's a HUGE increase in speed, far larger than any cpu or ram update could ever do (unless you already have serious problems like running XP on 64mb ram).

I've uprgaded my cpu and memory by significant amounts before and saw no difference at all, but when I got my first raid it was like night and day.

I would say that RAID 0 is far more stupid for home users, the chances of loosing data by drive failure is far less then loosing it for any other reason (virus, human error, etc) which RAID 0 won't protect from at all.

If you want a backup, don't get RAID 0, get a hard/tape/dvd drive to backup to, that will protect you against anything, not only against the less likely way of loosing data like RAID 0 does.

Also, RAID 1 won't really increase the chances of loosing data, if each drive is rated at X MTBF, then the entire array's MTBF is X, and even with only 1 drive you'll still loose all your data if it crashes, so RAID 0 is no worst then using a single hard drive.

[confus-ed]

RAID for redundancy is good. Raid for Speed is stupid, unless you have the money to burn...

Crack on your Kornyflakes again ?

All those super cheapo raid controllers have striping available so its not expensive (like the ones that come built into many motherboards, or can be bought seperately for $20 - a 'real raid' controller is gonna cost some serious money !), infact its effectively cheaper than mirroring as you get twice the space - raid striping is though 'stupid' if you don't make backup arrangements - though as pointed out any raiding at all might be (if you don't backup)..

Raid is a technology that's 'too hard' conceptually for most users - my advice is if you haven't 'cottoned on' to how/what its about - leave it alone & go a bit slower

[CeeBee]

Also, RAID 1 won't really increase the chances of loosing data

RAID0 you mean...

if each drive is rated at X MTBF, then the entire array's MTBF is X, and even with only 1 drive you'll still loose all your data if it crashes, so RAID 0 is no worst then using a single hard drive.

Looks like you skipped some classes... Let's see.. If the probability of failure in 2 years of a single drive it's let's say p0=0.1 (just picking a number here) then:
The probability of failure of a RAID 0 array made with 2 drives in 2 years is the probability that NOT((drive1 does not fail) AND (drive2 does not fail))
p=1-(1-p0)*(1-p0)=1-(0.9*0.9)=0.19 which is greater than 0.1 with a single drive.. BUSTED!