Is RAID 0 Really Worth It?

DocSilly · Post by **DocSilly** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 2:27 pm

Storagereview takes a new look at RAID-0, it's currently on the frontpage right here .

Unsurprisingly, the dual-drive RAID 0 solution delivers double the sequential transfer rate of a single unit. The SR Office, High-End, and Gaming DriveMarks, however, all climb by less than 10%. Also consider the fact that the RAID array boasts double the capacity of the single drive: as a result, some of that performance increase we see between the single drive and the RAID array simply comes from the larger capacity and resultant shorter actuator travel distances. Is this worth twice the cost plus the cost of the controller?

I guess cost is not the big issue since many mobos have RAID controller onboard. More important is the question if the small performance increase in most situations is worth double the risk of dataloss ... even though there are some situations that benefit from double the STR.

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 3:35 pm

I've never used raid 0 and won't ever use raid 0. If I absolutely HAVE to have high performance I'll at least pick 0+1. Something about trusting that all your drives will work indefinitely worries me heh.

Usually I use raid 5, and if I need a speed increase, well I'll buy a faster drive - then again I tend to go all scsi when I can afford it, thats just me tho.

rogue · Post by **rogue** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 4:50 pm

I've been using it for a year and a half w/out problems. I enjoy the faster loading times and games and general speediness..even though my RAID array is slightly whack because I use 1 80gb WD drive and 1 80gb Maxtor.

Busby · Post by **Busby** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 6:12 pm

I've used it for about a year and have loved it and probably won't go back to single drive setups. I dunno but dual 80GB drives with 8MB cache each kind of spoils you.....SATA might be different.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 6:15 pm

I used it for a year and was always a bit nervous about it.

When I upgraded the mobo I just went with a single 60Gb drive and since it's an ATA 133 I'm more than happy with the performance.

In the end I really don't think it was worth it.

RubberDuckie · Post by **RubberDuckie** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 10:11 pm

Ive used it before to see what the fuss was all about.
With todays mobos having RAID onboard it really wasnt that big of an issue to setup. Pretty easy actually.
However with all the upgrading I do...I found it to be a hassle and I was a bit unimpressed with the performance given the 133 HDDs with 8meg cache.

My vote would be its really NOT worth the effort.
However, a good use would be 2 15 or 20 gigers RAIDed for an OS drive.

But that is just one opinion.

honz · Post by **honz** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 1:49 am

raid 1 here. i would never trust my HD's to all work, lol. mebbe when they get so they're almost perfect

btw, whats raid 5?? i thought they only went raid 1 or 0

nexus_7 · Post by **nexus_7** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 1:58 am

I raided 4 drives a while ago...and wasnt all that impressed over there indivadual proformance.

Greg

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 2:52 am

Originally posted by honz
btw, whats raid 5?? i thought they only went raid 1 or 0

Raid 5 is parity with striping, it gives you better performance as RAID 1 with about the same fault tolerance. Need's at least 3 drives, and 1 is essentially offline.

If you have 5 10GB hard drives in a RAID 5 array, you only have 40GB of available space, so it's usually the best mix of performance and reliability. It's usually the level I use.

Though there's 6 basic RAID levels (0 - 5) and any number of Hybrid levels (like 0+3, 30, 50, 10, 0+1, etc etc) its a whole confusing mess as it is.

But the most popular RAID's used are 0,1,3,5 and 0+1 - there's a good overview on the popular RAID levels right here.

I'm not an IDE guy, I went to SCSI quite some time ago and for all my personal computers I tend to stick with it (THe wife, well, she can have her IDE heheh)
Here's a question for you IDE RAIDers: I heard that even though there's a RAID controller for IDE on a lot of motherboards, unless you spend the big cash to get a 3ware, etc, IDE RAID controller, it's still basically a software only RAID - any truth to it?
Do the onboard IDE raid's on motherboards have a seperate BIOS and Read/Write cache? If it really is hardware based raid, and can do level 5, I might seriously think of checking it out.

PreDatoR · Post by **PreDatoR** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 2:57 am

I have yet to see any IDE Raid card with Raid 5 on it... not sayign there isn't one i just haven't seen it... the onboard raid on motherboards i'm pretty sure is hardware... there's a chip and bios for it. most onboard raid does 0 1 and 0+1 as far as the cache goes not real sure on it... i know some of hte bigger ide cards have it that takes pc100 and stuf...

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 3:07 am

Poking around the web after I posted I found 3 monster IDE RAID cards over at Toms, the 8 drive Adaptec ATA RAID 2400A (Upgradeable to 128mb of ram

, the 8 drive HighPoint RocketRAID 404 and the mack daddy of em all, the 12 drive Promise SuperTrak SX6000, also with an onboard RISC cpu and up to 128mb of ram. Those are the cards I'm used to

)). THey do level 5, if I had the cash I'd check em out for sure. But I have to wonder if there's as much performance from IDE arrays as there is from SCSI arrays - I mean the fundamental part about scsi is the command queueing, which ide doesnt have. So I bet with SATA, the diffrence will be real narrow and the only real driving point price.

DocSilly · Post by **DocSilly** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 3:47 am

SCSI-RAID vs IDE-RAID (looking at RAID-5) = SCSI cost ~ 3 times as much as IDE but also delivers ~ 3 times the performance

That's not regarding STR or so, it is about application-level performance. Lets see if the SATA RAID-5 cards will do better.

SATA has many advantages: thin cables (airflow), no more jumpers (only one drive per channel), longer cable lengths (1m vs 40cm)
The 3ware Escalade 8500 Serial ATA RAID controllers looks good for mass-storage with a RAID-5 array ... though there're only few real SATA drives out there (yet), more to come later this year.
I would use a Cheetah X15.3 as bootdrive in my next PC and an IDE-SATA RAID-5 for mass-storage in my next PC (when I have the money to build it).

PreDatoR:
I guess you didn't find any IDE-RAID controller with RAID-5 cause you probably wouldn't look for a card that cost $499/€580

honz · Post by **honz** » Sat Feb 08, 2003 5:05 pm

wow. < writes that down >

ya, i'm still on my Promise TX2, good ole raid 0-1.

Busby · Post by **Busby** » Sat Feb 08, 2003 11:16 pm

Originally posted by Judg3
Poking around the web after I posted I found 3 monster IDE RAID cards over at Toms, the 8 drive Adaptec ATA RAID 2400A (Upgradeable to 128mb of ram , the 8 drive HighPoint RocketRAID 404 and the mack daddy of em all, the 12 drive Promise SuperTrak SX6000, also with an onboard RISC cpu and up to 128mb of ram. Those are the cards I'm used to )). THey do level 5, if I had the cash I'd check em out for sure. But I have to wonder if there's as much performance from IDE arrays as there is from SCSI arrays - I mean the fundamental part about scsi is the command queueing, which ide doesnt have. So I bet with SATA, the diffrence will be real narrow and the only real driving point price.

The Promise only allows 6 drives, 1 per channel. The Highpoint does allow 8 because of the 2x4 channels it uses (2drives per channel). The Adaptec, like the Promise, only allows 4 drives. Only the Adaptec and the Promise have RAID5 capability. The Highpoint is for desktop usage with RAID 0,1,0+1.

The promise sells for $244 at newegg, the Highpoint sells for $92.99.

3Ware also makes some ATA RAID solutions. they make a 12 drive card that sells for $525 with a 8 drive for $400. I believe those do RAID5 also.

rogue · Post by **rogue** » Sun Feb 09, 2003 12:26 pm

It IS true that integrated RAID controllers on motherboards are almost always software. While these software controllers do give better performance than OS level RAID, they are not true hardware and do not give hardware-level performance.