# Is it worth it to setup RAID 0?



## Kantastic (May 10, 2010)

So I have a 60GB Vertex coming in tomorrow and I have 2 new Samsung F3 1TB drives for storage. Would it be wise to do RAID 0 on them? If I ever want to hook this up to an HD media player (or whatever those things are called that you hook to your TV w/ an external drive to watch media) would I be able to do that with my 2 drives if they're in a RAID 0 array? 

I think my general question is what are some things I can't do if I have a RAID 0 array versus 2 normal separate drives running normally?


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## hat (May 10, 2010)

I wouldn't put storage drives in RAID 0. If one of the drives goes kaboom, you lose *everything*. Instead, I would get two 2TB drives and put them in raid 1.


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## johnspack (May 15, 2010)

Always have a separate storage drive from your raid array.  However,  I partition even my raid array,  and keep the oses on separate partitions.  I've had a storage part on my raid array for almost 2 years now,  no probs.  If I blow up my os,  it's just a single partition.  Still,  should keep a separate drive to store most critical data.  If a raid 0 drive fails,  it's all gone except for the separate drive!


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## Master Wolfe (May 15, 2010)

I've been running RAID 0 for years, but keep a separate drive for files and storage, as others suggest. I currently have 3 200 gig drives striped, and 1 750 gig WD Black as storage. You may or may not know that you can point your personal folders to folders on a separate drive, which is how I run (or roll, to be hip )


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## AsRock (May 15, 2010)

If you raid them Raid 1 is the best way unless you get another and do raid 5.


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## shevanel (May 15, 2010)

I have 2 SS F3's and I run them partioned. Some of the space is set on Raid0.. this is for booting, os and some games. on the other partition I have it set to Raid1 and the 650 gb is mirrored and has left me with approx 300gb of storage.

avg read times for the raid0 are 5-5.5's faster than that of the raid1 side which is about 45mb/s


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## remixedcat (May 15, 2010)

I personally don't use raid becuase its a pain. You run into partition issues. I did on my sister's pc.


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## Deleted member 3 (May 15, 2010)

remixedcat said:


> I personally don't use raid becuase its a pain. You run into partition issues. I did on my sister's pc.



Care to clarify? What you just said makes no sense at all. What are these "partition issues"?


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## Kreij (May 15, 2010)

@Kan : You should not have any problems using a RAID0 array with what you want to do.
You will basically have a big (~2TB) HDD that will perform a little faster than the single drrives.
But as others have stated, if you lose 1 drive, you lose the entire array.

I have two drives in a RAID0 array and I back them up to a low cost NAS device that is running an exact same size RAID0 array.

RAID1 will give you data redundance, but you will only have 1TB of usable disk space.
RAID5 performs a little worse due to the overhead and requires more drives.

If you do not use a RAID array and just use the 2x1TB drives as storage, you should still have a backup plan in case one or the other fails.


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## TIGR (May 15, 2010)

I wouldn't recommend it unless you're storing data that can easily be rebuilt/reacquired or which is backed up elsewhere. If your 1TBs are set up as separate drives, then one failure means losing one drive of data. If set up in RAID, one failure will mean losing all data on both drives. Anyway, the performance benefit will probably be difficult to notice [depending on your usage].


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## remixedcat (May 15, 2010)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Care to clarify? What you just said makes no sense at all. What are these "partition issues"?



when I went to add a 5th partition, was gonna be adobe scratch space, to my sister's pc it made all volumes simple, I rebooted to finish an install and the os would not boot after then. I forget what happened afterwards. 

I fixed it by breaking the raid in bios and reformat and redo all partitions. this was the only way to fix the problem.

since simple volumes are considered unbootable according to the os. 

I read that some controllers have limits. is this true?


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## Kreij (May 15, 2010)

The speed difference on a RAID0 array (vs. single drives) is quite noticable depending on what you are doing. Everything I've read says the increase can be between 5-30%.

I've noticed reduced times when doing reads, expecially in things like game areas loading.
Remember though, if a game takes 9 seconds to load something and now it does it in 6 seconds, you are not saving a whole lot of time. If you are copying Gigabytes of data between arrays, the increase can be quite noticable as it can shave off quite a bit of time.

If however, you are streaming media, like movies, to a player you are not going to see any difference as the movies will not play any faster. 

@Remix, different controllers have different limits (or features), but I don't undestand why you have partitions on raided disks to begin with.


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## remixedcat (May 15, 2010)

my sister needed it. I just broke the raid and I fixed the problem. its an hp media center pc so I didn't expect it to be perfect. it was an ebay find.


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## AsRock (May 15, 2010)

remixedcat said:


> when I went to add a 5th partition, was gonna be adobe scratch space, to my sister's pc it made all volumes simple, I rebooted to finish an install and the os would not boot after then. I forget what happened afterwards.
> 
> I fixed it by breaking the raid in bios and reformat and redo all partitions. this was the only way to fix the problem.
> 
> ...



I believe 4 partitions are the most you can make on a single array though windows.  Did you read the warning when making a simple volume ?.

If you need more partitions on a array what you do is use less of the disk space so you can make 2 arrays out of the same HDDS.  Then you be able to make more partitions.

Thinking more about this Raid1 would be the best for sure  sure you only see the 1/2 the space of both of the drives but if ever one failed you be able to save the data one way or another were as using a single disk there be no question to lost data and raid0 is totally out of the question as it would result in total loss.


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## remixedcat (May 15, 2010)

wow thx for the info 

I read the warning but I was tired.


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## Kantastic (May 15, 2010)

I initially decided to scrap the RAID0 idea, but now I'm considering doing RAID1.

If I were to do RAID1, would I be able to take one of the hard drives out of my computer and use them in another without issues?


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## AsRock (May 16, 2010)

Kantastic said:


> I initially decided to scrap the RAID0 idea, but now I'm considering doing RAID1.
> 
> If I were to do RAID1, would I be able to take one of the hard drives out of my computer and use them in another without issues?



Well the raid 1 would become degraded and you would be required to replace the HDD.  And to put the other HDD in another comp it most likley fail to boot due to other disk being missing.

However MAYBE if the other comp had the same Raid controller it may show up but not sure about that fir sure.   What i can say whan my raid 5 completly failed on me ( totally my fault ) i booted of a single HDD and fixed the raid and it worked 100% again.


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## Master Wolfe (May 16, 2010)

Kantastic said:


> I initially decided to scrap the RAID0 idea, but now I'm considering doing RAID1.
> 
> If I were to do RAID1, would I be able to take one of the hard drives out of my computer and use them in another without issues?



Mirrors are pretty slow as well. Data has to be written to 2 (or however many) drives, and when read has to be compared as well, IIRC.


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## erocker (May 16, 2010)

I would use the Vertex for the O/S and the Samsungs in RAID 0 for games and programs. Loading times in games will decrease. Either that, or I'd just keep the two drives separate and not bother with RAID.


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## TIGR (May 16, 2010)

If it's important data, yes to RAID 1 assuming you are okay with the disk capacity sacrifice. Depending on the RAID controller in each involved system, you may be able to pull out one and use it in the other system temporarily (e.g. to copy files between systems), but I wouldn't recommend it. Better to copy those files via another drive or network connection. I use dual gigabit connections per system to access/transfer files between my rigs and it works well with no perceived hiccups. That said, I'm doing it with the two sig rigs in RAID 5 and my "main" [unlisted] system in RAID 10, and your storage array is going to be the limiting factor in accessing/transferring data between computers if you use RAID 1, assuming a gigabit or better connection. Of course, it probably will be in RAID 0 too, but it'll be close to [but not quite] twice as fast at transferring lots of files (again depends on the controller).


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## Deleted member 67555 (May 16, 2010)

Kreij said:


> The speed difference on a RAID0 array (vs. single drives) is quite noticable depending on what you are doing. Everything I've read says the increase can be between 5-30%.
> 
> I've noticed reduced times when doing reads, expecially in things like game areas loading.
> Remember though, if a game takes 9 seconds to load something and now it does it in 6 seconds, you are not saving a whole lot of time. If you are copying Gigabytes of data between arrays, the increase can be quite noticable as it can shave off quite a bit of time.
> ...


Ive noticed an overall improvement of at least 50%, small file types nothing noticeable some games fly some don't But installing large programs is where the speed is most noticeable...

I have a partition on my raid setup for an extra OS...


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## shevanel (May 16, 2010)

some of the biggest adavantages I notice on a daily basis using raid0 compared to a non raid0 drive are..



> Load times across the board are obv faster.. such as loading a huge folder of music.. on a single non raid0 16mb 7200rpm drive I it would take some time to load 1000's of mp3's onto the screen or media player.. with raid0 it's 2 seconds tops. also same with pictures.





> decompressing files from the hdd are faster it seems.





> installing downloaded aps or programs usually take seconds for a 50mb file.. aps like AIM,Xfire or other <5mb files install within 1-3 seconds.





> Aside from Bad Company 2, any game I play loads within 5 seconds. I'm always the first one in a server for TF2 or other valve games


.



> Defrag seems faster but that one hard to call if raid0 helps because the disk is always different.





> fraps videos record smoother on raid0 compared to a single drive, unless you use a dedicated drive for fraps. I don't know much about write speeds with raid0 but I have to assume its faster than a single drive, i could be wrong





> From power on to the windows login screen it takes my pc about 16 seconds.. but really it could take less but this bios goes though a raid screen at bootup which account for 4 seconds of the total load time.



Are 2 hdd's in raid0 worth it for a boot/os drive? Absolutely. everyone knows a platter build HDd is the largest botteneck a PC can have. 

 the 32mb cache 7200rpm 500gb storage drive I just got from boogah is pretty damn fast but on a bench it'll only max 135mb/s and avg around 110-115.. but with 2 drives the load of the info being read/written is split and performance is 100%+ on raid0.. like with a dual core cpu vs a single core.

just be sure to have a backup for all the files you store. and for anyone that says raid0 has a high fail rate I say myth because my pc stays on 24/7 and my drives (knock on wood) have been error free since i installed the os and *I'll never go back to a single drive boot/os until I score a 200gb SSD for a reasonable price. Raid0 is great if you run your machine overclocked or not*

I think a single drive has just about as much of a chance at failing as any of the 2 drives in a raid0 config so why not take advantage of the extra speed? My drives were $110 total and I have 5x's or more space than I would have had if I jumped the gun early on a SSD.

When I was in the market I google raid0 issues vs ssd issues and I learned I did not want to deal with those types of ssd issues for the lack of storage space and cost of the drive and I stumbled on many SSD issues posted around the webz.

For me and raid0 reliabilty.. time will tell and tpu will be the first to know but I don't worry about a hdd too much.


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## Frizz (May 16, 2010)

Easy, 

Performance wise, hell yes.

Convenience wise, that's still and will always be up to personal preference. IF your a gamer, performance enthusiasts or what not Raid 0 is a must. 

To me its just the same as asking "Is it worth overclocking my computer?".


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## Deleted member 3 (May 16, 2010)

remixedcat said:


> wow thx for the info
> 
> I read the warning but I was tired.



So because you were tired you decide to make bold claims on discussion forums?

Besides, it's not a Windows limit but an MBR limit, which is also limited at 2TB, older controllers tend to be limited to 2TB arrays as well (though some do allow you to create multiple 2 TB arrays)

Long story short, it has nothing to do with RAID at all.


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## remixedcat (May 16, 2010)

it was still wierd. I thought it was gonna only do it for the one unformatted partition, but it did it to all of them. so the warning was taken as such. it didn't tell me all the partitions would do dat  it scared the hell outta me when I did that. :S


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## Deleted member 67555 (May 16, 2010)

Here is a recent Hd Tune check





With a single drive I was getting an average of 100mb/s
so as you see it's not quite double the performance but fairly close
Ive had this Raid setup with Vista x64 and under Win7 x64 for over a year error free


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## shevanel (May 16, 2010)

nice access time

I'll run a bench on my array now as I go walk the dog.. brb with results.


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## Deleted member 3 (May 16, 2010)

shevanel said:


> nice access time
> 
> I'll run a bench on my array now as I go walk the dog.. brb with results.



There is a whole thread about HD tune results, post it there.


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## shevanel (May 16, 2010)

Ok. 

 I think the op already understands now that *he doesn't need raid0 since he has the SSD* but incase anyone else reading this thread were looking for raid0 info here is my bench using 2 drives in Raid0 HD tune thread


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