OT: A little help with RAID please

goodtimej wrote on 3/14/2008, 4:49 PM
OK, here's my situation. I have never had a RAID setup but I am aware of them and I have spent the last couple hours doing a little research. I've decided I'm gonna get myself some of this RAID stuff.

I have a Dell 690 Workstation, XP Pro. This motherboard has a built in RAID controller (RAID 0 or 1 only) The current hard drive setup is this:

4 bays in the tower
1 of them is my OS and aps, an 80 gig - internal
1 of them is my files, a 500 gig - internal
The other 2 bays are open.
I also have an external 500 gig USB2 harddrive, dont know if that is relevant.

So I want to take these other 2 bays and setup up a RAID configuration with 2 500 gig WD SATA Hard Drives (I think these are the ones I want). I suppose I am just looking for what kind of experience you all may have had with either RAID 0 or 1. I am aware that RAID 0 is a performance booster and not for backup. I am aware that RAID 1 is for backup and does not give you much of a performance boost. In fact, in most of the tests I have looked up, RAID 1 offered lower read and write performance than no RAID at all.

My purposes for wanting RAID are twofold. I am about to start editing large amounts of HD footage, so I would really like a performance boost. This footage, though, is very valuable and I need a backup strategy.

Do you people who use RAID 0 see a great performance difference? Do you people who use RAID 1 see any decrease in performance? Should I use XP Pro's built in software to configure or should I use the hardware built into the motherboard?

Sorry I posted this on here and not a tech board, I just figured you all could give me more pointed information since the purpose of the computer in question is purely for video. Thanks.

Comments

Kennymusicman wrote on 3/14/2008, 5:31 PM
Raid 0 will give you 1TB at performance boost, with no backup.
Raid 1 will give you 500MB with complete backup and minimal/none performance loss (I know you stated most of this - just pointing out sizes between Raid 0 & 1)

Hardware raid is good, but a PIA if something goes wrong. Software raid is a litte more able to switch about when something goes fubar, but less performance gain since it requires CPU interaction.

Another option is 1 HDD for reading, and 1 HDD for writing - better performance when rendering. (ie, no raid). There are other raid options, but not with 2 HDDs.

Editing multiple AVCHD streams, I've returned to non-raid.

John_Cline wrote on 3/14/2008, 5:45 PM
RAID 0 uses several discs in a way which gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks is lost if any one disk fails. Two 500 gig drives = one very fast, less secure 1 TB drive.

RAID 1 (mirrored disks) uses two (possibly more) disks which each store the same data, so that data is not lost so long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array is just the capacity of a single disk. Two 500 gig drives = one very secure, slightly slower 500 gig drive.

By the way, my current preference is for Seagate 7200.11 drives, I've got about 50 of them, some running 24/7 for months, with no failures. Just in case, they have a five-year warranty.

I used to use WD drives until I had a rash of failures. If you're going to use WD drives, you will want to use them as RAID-1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
jabloomf1230 wrote on 3/14/2008, 6:36 PM
I haven't seen one of these HP babies personally, but I think that it supports RAID 10 (nested RAID), which is a striped set of mirrored HDDs. It gives you both the performance boost and the data redundancy. I would leave the OS drive out of the array and get 4 identical drives for the other four bays to make up the RAID 10 array. Check your RAID setup utility or the Dell website to see if the controller can support RAID 10 (also sometimes written as RAID 1+0). The nested approach doesn't give you the speed of 4 HDDs in RAID0, but it does give you a good performance boost and redundancy.
goodtimej wrote on 3/16/2008, 11:20 AM
Do any of you with RAID 0 actually notice a good speed difference or is it negligable?

Do any of you with RAID 1 actually notice a speed drop?
jabloomf1230 wrote on 3/16/2008, 11:56 AM
It's very noticeable when you run one of those testing programs like HDTach or HDTune. Not only do the average read and write speeds increase, but the minimum speeds improve even more. However, in the real world, the improvements are not as evident, just because most routine HDD activity never approaches the limits of even a single drive. But, if you are copying large files, you might see almost a halving of the time that it takes from a single HDD to the 2 HDD RAID 0 array. And for capturing raw video via HDMI, etc., a regular HDD just isn't fast enough to keep up. You need a RAID0 array just to make it work.

But is it worth the extra cost and the decline in reliability? It really depends on your specific application. If you want to see the impact of RAID0 yourself, download HDTach (Google it) and test one of your existing HDDs. Then compare the test results to HDTach's database. You will probably find a RAID0 setup in the database that comes close to your present hardware setup.
goodtimej wrote on 3/16/2008, 7:55 PM
Thanks all. I've decided to go RAID 1 with these drives:

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

Wish me luck!