hey, i am getting a new computer, and have been thinknig of setting up a RAID for my hard drives. a friend of mine told me that disks that are configured in a RAID are constantly spinning, and that would seem like it would wear out the disk pretty fast. could someone tell me if there is anything like that in relation to setting up a RAID? i was thinking of getting 2 10k rpm western digital drives, which would result in blazing load-times, but that decision depends on if this disk spinning thing is remotely true. i really dont like the idea of my hard drives spinning for hours straight, even when im not using them.
RAID 0 is what I assume you're referring to. Firstly, it isn't actually RAID, as there isn't any redundency. Second, it wont increase loading times by much, if at all, it might even make them slightly worse. As for disks constantly spinning, theres no reason that RAID 0 would wear out drives fast that I can think of. RAID 1 or higher might, but then, the idea is it doesn't matter so much because theres redundency and you're data is safe(r). Unless you deal with a small number of massive files, RAID 0 isn't better, it does double your likelyhood of losing all your data though. So unless you deal with massive movies, audio, or pictures in editors and such like, forget about it.
thanks for the reply, really helpful, ill just be going with a single 10k drive and then a bigger and slower drive for storage. thx again
RAID 0 can move biiiig files really quick, but the extra latency the controller and processing adds makes it pointless if not worse for general use such as loading games and Windows. If you do a lot of video editing or move big files around a lot then its worth it, if you just faff around in Windows and play games then its not worth it. As said above, if one drive fails you lose the whole lot so its risky business if you have stuff you can't afford or don't want to lose.
That's your best bet upho. Use Raptors un-raided for games. Then huge 7200RPM drives(in RAID 1 or 5 if you can afford it) for general storage. 70ishGb's should be enough for your games and windows install.
meh people always say raid 0 is crappy for in windows cos of the extra latency and blah blah but in windows with a decent amount of ram its a bit of a non-factor imo raid 0 isnt bad for windows its just different i like it
Hahaha awesome. Please introduce this friend on here so we can enjoy pwning his misguidedness all day long (j/k) All disks, in every computer spin all day long (as long as they are switched on). It actually wears the motors more having to spin up during boot so it's always better to leave your pc on (this amungst other reasons). Other people will inform you on the benefits and problems with RAID.
Latency isn't really a big issue as far as most people are concerned I think. The main factor is, RAID 0 doesn't benefit most people, and it's risky as hell unless you have a backup plan that you really enforce. Basicly, pointless for most people, and way overused.
thats what im saying, the main argument people give for not using raid 0 is that extra latency makes it slower than a single disk in windows but yea theres the risk thing, but tbh i use it as a system disk on my main machine, data goes on the raid 5 file server
Well if you've got RAID 5 you probably have things sorted enough that if your 0 goes down, you won't lose all your important stuff. But it's all the kiddies who hear about this RAID 0 thing that doubles the speed of everything and the size of certain vital organs, and ends world poverty. Rush to get it, then lose a couple hundred gigs of data a year down the line I feel sorry for.
Let me tell you firsthand - RAID0 Raptors isn't all it's cracked up to be. Spend the money on two 250-300GB drives with 16MB cache instead, it's much more worth it. It makes no noticible difference in load speeds of anything, and the extra seek time defeats the purpose of having 10kRPM spindle speeds. And yes, almost all drives are constantly spinning. If you want a very quiet or power-conserving machine you can configure them to spin down after x minutes, but of course it takes a hella lot more torque to start the drive spinning (or stop it for that matter) than to keep it spinning, so it best avoided unless you have a real reason for it.
this is all very useful and interesting, things i never knew. yea, i think now im planning on setting up a 36 gig raptor 10k for my system and game files, an setting up an 80 or bigger gig raid 5 for data, that seems pretty safe and fast to me, i have been dealing with a slowish computer for a couple of years now, and my hard drive has crashed twice now in 3 months, that was a clue...
hey.. since we are talking about hard drives, what hard drives does each one of you recommend and not recommend and why?
You need at least 3 drives for RAID 5, but generally RAID 5 is not suited to the desktop. RAID Explained You might want to head over to Storage Review as they specialise in reviewing hard drives, but right now I'd recommend Seagate drives due to their 5 year warranty.
if this is any help, there's a load of stuff about RAID here I'v heard that RAID 3 is good. Still needs 3 drives, but apparently you get the security of RAID 5 with the bonuses of RAID 0.
