HDD and RAID Suggestions?

[SugarCoat]

Going to overhaul my HDDs in the coming weeks and was curious if anyone has any first hand use with the large seagate drives, 500gb/750gb drives and/or the 150gb raptors.

Was also leaning toward a RAID 0+1 setup since i'm going to have the space for the redundancy, PC is about gaming performance first, some music, photos, etc..

One thing i'm debating over is whether to do a single raid setup or to do the best of both worlds so to speak and get two 750gb's for storage and two 150gb raptors for the OS and games. Thing is i'm not exactly sure the Raptors are worth the premium, from what i've read most people dont notice the performance but the problem with their point of view is they admit they're comparing performance of a RAID 0 array to a single Raptor, course the Raid 0 would be faster.

Any issue with running two 0+1 arrays seperate like that on software raid? If theres an issue i suppose what i could do is run two drives where performance is needed in 0+1 and the other two in RAID 1.

2x 150GB Raptors in 0 or 0+1 for games/OS
2x 750GB HDDs in 0+1 or RAID 1 for storage

seem okay? If the raptors arent worth it i'd problably just do the twin 750s in 0+1.

Lastly, pretty dead set on software RAID at this point, but i will ask anyway, theres nothing i can really gain worthwhile by setting up hardware raid i assume right? At least not performance wise for what i plan on doing.


Suggestions, criticism, or is this going to work like i think it will?

 

[Skrying]

I get the impression you're just spending money to spend it.

Frankly from what you describe your needs as you're wasting money. Do you honestly need two 750GB drives? Even backing one up on the other that seems really far blown. I could see it if you say had a massive movie or music collection, but I don't get that impression from how your goal.

I'd personally grab a Raptor, maybe two if you think you'd actually get a benefit (which you won't), and then a 750GB to back up on.

 

[SugarCoat]

bi-yearly buying bonanza. seriously though its going to last me awhile, multiple revisions of motherboards and processors unless someone makes a huge performance breakthrough in HDD performance in the next 5 years. Only reason i've replaced personal HDDs in the past is because i keep running out of space.

 

[Rolf N]

Raid 0 doesn't increase performance. Maybe if you're regularly working with uncompressed video, but I guress you don't.
Raptors are fast because they have very low seek times. A Raid 0 of 7200rpm standard drives isn't any faster than a single drive in practical terms, and surely not faster than the latest model Raptors; outside of transfer rate benchmarks that is.

Having more than a single drive not in RAID can increase performance if you set your stuff up carefully. In general terms the goal is to have a "source" and a "destination" drive as often as possible, so transfers do not have to be interrupted by frequent seeks. So far the theory goes.
Having swap and temp on a different physical disk than the data you're working with is the easiest big win. The problem with that is that the use of a dedicated drive *just* for that is a terrible waste.

 

[SugarCoat]

RAID 0 doesnt allow faster read/write let alone a worthwhile increase? Whats the point then other then combining the drives and creating a danger in terms of data loss?

 

[Skrying]

RAID 0 doesnt allow faster read/write let alone a worthwhile increase? Whats the point then other then combining the drives and creating a danger in terms of data loss?

To say you use it. It has its place for those who work with nothing but uncompressed video or such, but for a gamer or anyone who doesnt work with such massive files its pointless really.

 

[Ty]

RAID 0 doesnt allow faster read/write let alone a worthwhile increase? Whats the point then other then combining the drives and creating a danger in terms of data loss?

There really isn't much of a point to RAID 0 IMO. Maybe if you put the OS pagefile on one and the OS on the other, that might help some but otherwise in normal day-to-day use, you won't notice much of a difference if any.

I think there are a few real world benchmarks that put the various RAID configuration to the test.

Personally I'm going to go for a RAID 5 configuration but that's because I need the redundancy for our pictures, etc.

 

[BRiT]

Personally I'm going to go for a RAID 5 configuration but that's because I need the redundancy for our pictures, etc.

Agreed. Raid-5 is where it's at for data replication, however to do it right you should be using a hardware-based controller card. I got tired of having drives die and having to restore from DVD-R media. If you don't need as much storage and want to do it cheap, pickup 2 500G drives and run in Raid-1.

The best bang-per-buck for me was setting up an 8-drive Raid-5 array of PATA 250G drives. This provided me with 1.6 TeraBytes of usable storage (230G formated capacity with 7 usable units). I already had a few of the disks, so when w00t had em on special I picked up the rest. I finally settled on running with an LSI MegaRaid i4 controller. Toms Networking Article.

At first I tried running pure software, but man what a hassle and PITA. Then I tried using an ACARD RAID-5 controller. What a mistake. The write performance was 9 times slower than writing to a single drive ad CPU usage was 20-40% on a 2.4Ghz AMD Barton. The LSI write performance is close enough to single-drive that I don't notice or mind the slight slowdown and cpu usage is around 5%.

Overall I'm pleased with how it turned out, considering I spent about $250 total in March to build it. It now houses development repository in addition to multimedia files. If I was to do it today, I'd consider using SATA drives and PCI-Express controller or possibly pickup a 6-drive capacity NAS. Though a quick tally on that cost would be well over $1K.

 

[SugarCoat]

In terms of software vs hardware raid though, for what i'm doing which is essentially generic enthusiast desktop crap theres very little gain though from what i understand correct? Not like i'm going to need the CPU cycles nor will the HDDs be getting anywhere near the work-out of a server system.

 

[BRiT]

In terms of software vs hardware raid though, for what i'm doing which is essentially generic enthusiast desktop crap theres very little gain though from what i understand correct? Not like i'm going to need the CPU cycles nor will the HDDs be getting anywhere near the work-out of a server system.

If all your doing is generic enthusiast desktop crap, then run RAID-1.

For Raid-5, the task of generating the parity bits is quite expensive and timeconsuming. That is not an issue with Raid-1 or Raid 0+1.

 

[bbmf]

i would suggest that all of you who have spoken here,,,

in answer to the RAID queation,
should get some software and check their HDD specs...
and after that, run some benches on RAID'd rigs
for your selves, not reading others' benches because
no matter how many you read, and how many reviews
how much you know comes out when you type nonsense...
and with authority no less
and mister
burnt-pockets-bi-annual-spree-not-enough-room-in-hdd
good luck because you have the most to learn if you are
anywhere near serious about what you have written
so i give you one quick lesson...
500GB-750GB hard drives
.5T-.75T
in 1995 when the GUi was popularized by bill gates
.5T was not even terminology to be discovered
and then used...
there were mainframes that could not even
have this kind of wet dream in one package
if you can fill this up twice a year you should not be
telling or asking anyone about what you do with your hardware...
you outdo us all, and your methods must be trademarked b4 we find out
how you copy/create/bootleg/so much data and /or music
then again, all you mention is gaming and "storage", so why
am i talking to you at all...
sheesh, i must be tired; goodnight all.
stop posting crap

 

[AlNom]

...interesting...poem.

 

[Ty]

Overall I'm pleased with how it turned out, considering I spent about $250 total in March to build it. It now houses development repository in addition to multimedia files. If I was to do it today, I'd consider using SATA drives and PCI-Express controller or possibly pickup a 6-drive capacity NAS. Though a quick tally on that cost would be well over $1K.

I'm looking at two choices. Build my own using an Areca card (the 1230 seems to be a performer but it's nearly $500 I think) or go a route via Infrant or perhaps Synology.

The benefits from the first are the fun factor of making it myself but the headache of troubleshooting it. Also power and noise become more of an issue. Definitely more expandable though.

For Raid-5, the task of generating the parity bits is quite expensive and timeconsuming. That is not an issue with Raid-1 or Raid 0+1.

Yep, the XOR calc is pretty hefty from what I understand.

 

[Rur0ni]

I was also considering building a raid-5 backup server for stuff. Areca comes recommended it seems.

 

[BRiT]

I'm looking at two choices. Build my own using an Areca card (the 1230 seems to be a performer but it's nearly $500 I think)

I was also considering building a raid-5 backup server for stuff. Areca comes recommended it seems.

If I were to go SATA, I'd definitely picked up an Areca card. I'd go for broke and slam in a 1Gig SO-DIMM too. If you don't have a UPS, you might want to get the battery bacup unit for the card. Newegg lists the 12-port 1230 for $740, and the battery backup unit for $130. For that price, I'd defintely jump on this one 12-drive NAS unit I had seen. (Trying to find the link to the one I had seen)

 

[nutball]

Does a $700+ hardware RAID card even remotely make sense for a RAID-5 array used purely for backup purposes? As far as I can see h/w RAID improves write performance, but unless you're going to be generating hundreds of gigabytes of data per day I can't see how this is necessary for pure backups. If the aim is just to spend money then go for it I say

Personally I'm about to start playing with iSCSI and ZFS, the combination looks to have some quite tantalising possibilities

 

[Ty]

Does a $700+ hardware RAID card even remotely make sense for a RAID-5 array used purely for backup purposes? As far as I can see h/w RAID improves write performance, but unless you're going to be generating hundreds of gigabytes of data per day I can't see how this is necessary for pure backups. If the aim is just to spend money then go for it I say

Make sense? A decade ago I stated that PCs were the new hot rods. Hobbies don't make sense.

Still, that's more cash then I'm willing to part with (wife acceptance factor and all) so I'll be making a bit more sense than that. I'll be using the NAS as a data repository for media (HD video, etc.) so I want it pretty fast. It might need to serve a couple of TVs at once.

Personally I'm about to start playing with iSCSI and ZFS, the combination looks to have some quite tantalising possibilities

What's that?

 

[Zengar]

I recently ( the day before yesterday) bought two Samsung HD160JJ drives (160 GB each) and run them in Raid-0. According to Sandra they are about 220% faster then my older single drive. Also, I did notice speedups while loading games and OS, besides, the antivirus software runs faster ^^. But two Raptors are a bit of overkill, IMHO. Of course, if you have the money.

 

[Blazkowicz]

simplest and great enough would be a single raptor, and two 750GB in RAID 1.
Single raptor has quite some bandwith already, low seek times (and game loading is also conditioned by CPU speed and ram quantity). raid 0 might be nice but is also a bit of an expense and hassle.

0+1 : it's done with four HDD not two (except for that weird proprietary "Intel Matrix" thing but it's not really 0+1)

RAID 5 : it's better meant for bigger, cheap storage. the typical home RAID 5 would be a software one on a lan file server, storing MP3, porn, divx, mpeg2, backups etc. using the HDD size with biggest bang for the buck (which one is it, now).

( off course, a home raid 5 is not typical at home, and thus a hardware one even less. though I don't doubt you guys here like it )

 

[SugarCoat]

actually the 2x raptors was more for the space rather then the RAID ability or speed. 150gb is not alot if i'm going to try squeezing OS and games on it for the coming years.