OT: Setting up RAID - 1 & 0 or 10?

Kevmiami wrote on 3/18/2003, 10:53 AM
Hello,

Posted a rant in another topic re: Maxtor failure...Yesterday, I ordered the new FastTrack TX4000 Raid Controller ($122); this is a four channel PCI card (very cool). I currently have two WD120's setup as a RAID 0(fast)on my ASUS MB (built in Promise RAID controller) and a near-new dead Maxtor80 (*#!!!*#*@). I will purchase two more WD120's today, and the question is:

Should I set the four drives up as a 240gb RAID 10 (mirrored-striped RAID), or set up two drives as a mirroed 120gb RAID 1 for the "System/program/data" drive and and the other two as a 240gb striped RAID 0 "Video Drive?" Obviously, I loose 120gb of capacity with the RAID 10 (I can live with that) and the video drive is less secure w/o mirroring (I also live with that), but will the RAID 10 slow write speed enough to adversly affect affect capture/render.

In addition, I understand a RAID setup can tax the 32bit bandwith of the PCI bus (which can cause capture issues - I'm using Pyro 1394 PCI card); would there be any advantage to using the ASUS M.B. RAID controller for two drives and the PCI Card for the other two drives? (I understand this may be a dumb question, so please, be gentle - I'm an advocate of the only dumb question is - "Are we there yet?"). Thanks, Kevin.

Comments

craftech wrote on 3/18/2003, 10:56 AM
Set them up as two separate drives and skip the Raid array altogether. It will shorten the life of the drives, increase the error rate, and is completely unnecessary for using Vegas.

John
JJKizak wrote on 3/18/2003, 11:10 AM
Also win2k and xp don't like raid (internal) very much as it tends to
allow the OS to drop the HIVE files and you have to reinstall everything.
There is some kind of speed issue on shutdown which was supposedly solved
with SP-3 and SP1. The hard drives are so fast, why do you need raid? The
ata-133's will capture at 20megs per sec.

JJK
CrazyRussian wrote on 3/18/2003, 11:14 AM
I kinda agree with craftech - IDE RAIDs are prone for errors, but I still would recommend RAID-0.
Why do you want RAID-10 on your system drive? Redundancy? If yes, then go for it. If you can spare 30 minutes for rebuilding of your system in case of crash... dont use RAID, Drive Image or Ghost will do the job. And, dont you have like 10 giger for your system drive?
Here is how i would've done it: System drive - 10 Gig, max 20 Gig EIDE drive on channel 1. Perfrom Drive image or Ghost on a weekly basis to CDRW or DVDRW (Gost can write directly to DVD) for backup. If you can, put this drive on a MOBO IDE. This will leave you with all 4 channels for your RAID-0. Remember, RAID-0 is NOT hardware redundand and failure of ANY of the drives fails the entire array, but pefrormace of RAID-0 improves if you have more drives on separate channels, so with 4 HD on 4 channels... it would be pretty fast.
Kevmiami wrote on 3/19/2003, 6:17 AM
Thanks for the feedback!!

I was having problems with dropped frames on my previous rig, so I thought I would take advantage of the on-board Promise RAID controller. Based on recently losing my system drive (and backups are never "currrent enough"), I thought the RAID 0 for the system drive would be a good idea (can't even find small hard drives anymore - ordered two WD 7200 40s - will setup as RAID 0 with 10gb OS partition and 30gb Program partition).

I have not read much on RAID errors on the internet; what kind of errors and what is the typical frequency? I was under the impression that my WD1200BBs (7200 RPM, 120gb, ATA100, 2mb cache) drives would benefit substantially from placing in a RAID1. I didn't have enough time to do any kind of serious testing before the maxtor died, but there did not seem to be any major difference between rendering a file from/to the RAID, as compared to rendering from the RAID to the 7200 Maxtor. Has anybody else done much testing with RAIDS/Capturing/Rendering? Happy Editing, Kevin.
frank_jarle wrote on 3/21/2003, 5:14 AM
...Im very surprised you have had experience with dropping framerate, you are sure its due to your other HD?

Why i ask is this simple, i have an old HD of 14GB, ATA-33 (oh yes), both when i capture video from my camera and when i render the finish project i dont have problem with any dropped frames.

First off, what is you hardware specs? As a guideline here is mine.
i2.4Ghz
Corsair 512MB PC3200 (VMS). (the important thing is FAST memory that can handle low CAS latency, i run mine at CAS 2 without any problem.
HD 14GB, first off i see lots of people like to have small HD's for their video editing, ok if you have one computer for VE and one for surfing the net and play games, why not.

But if you were like me, i need to share my computer with my wife and we both likes to play computer games, im going to install following: 80GB for OS, games and software and 120GB for videos ans backups.

Frankie
Singapore
dlesko wrote on 3/21/2003, 6:13 PM
Is the drive you are capturing too Fat32? I've had dropped frames on Fat32 partitions but not on my NTFS partitions.

dlesko
Treadlin wrote on 3/21/2003, 6:35 PM
I am very happy with my Promise FastTrak100 setup as RAID 0 on 2 sets of two 80 GB (4 drives total). One catch! Make sure you turn off SmartCheck in the utility, if you have it. It spends so much time looking at the drives that it causes clicks in the audio capture. Once in a while I will enable it just to check on the drives and then turn it off again.
pcfreakx wrote on 3/23/2003, 2:13 AM
Okay, I am not sure who says there are errors in RAID on 2K pre-SP3 but I have been using this type of setup (Promise controller, dual-120G SE WD drives) for quite a while without issue in a stripe. I can't see ANY reason to do a RAID 10. I have only built that type of system for high end database systems in a enterprise datacenter. That type of array allows the failure of one drive or one whole set of drives. Usually this is done with 2 different raid controllers to take the burden off of just one. If you try to pull this off with just the Promise (I didn't even know it supported 10), you will make that thing cry. I pray you aren't talking about software RAID, either cause that will really pound your system. Stripe them into one set (RAID 0) if possible and just backup religiously. YOu should get excellent I/O, and I would be really surprised if one of those drives blows. It isn't covered by a 3yr warranty while WD only covers the other drives by 1yr for nothin'.
craftech wrote on 3/23/2003, 8:45 AM
Kevmiami,
I think people are losing sight of why you wanted to try Raid.

If you are having problems with your current setup, I don't think Raid will help. It will only compound the problem.

Give us your exact setup including OS, drives, drive letter and partition info, whether or not you have DMA enabled, ATA Controller part number, type of Ram and motherboard, processor, chipset settings in the Bios, and average System Resources Free percentage.

John