RAID.

[The EvilAlex]

Hello!

 

Right now I have 1 hdd(Western Digital 640gb black caviar) and I wonder should I go RAID(Having the 2 of the same HDD's) or not.

Dose it really helps the performence??

What will improve??

What do I need to set it up??

And most importantly, is it worth it??

I have ASUS P6TD mb.

 

I mostly play open world RPG's.

Edited October 28, 2010 by The EvilAlex

[SpeedCrazy]

Depends what you want to achieve. I would recommend reading this. then rethinking your question.

[The EvilAlex]

Depends what you want to achieve. I would recommend reading this. then rethinking your question.

 

Performance.

And as it seem's RAID 0 is best for me but the questions are the same.

Is it worth adding second Western Digital 640gb black caviar to ASUS P6TD motherboard??

What will improve??

And what do I need to set it up??

[BluePanda]

Performance.

This is Waco -

 

 

Then don't bother. It won't help noticeably in day-to-day use and adds a huge possibility of failure.

[Drdeath]

Raid0 is not a huge possibilty of failure. this is the wrong part of the forum for this thread BTW.

[Nemo]

RAID 0 offers no redundancy and doubles your chance of data loss due to a drive failure which is the point Waco was stating.

[geoxile]

Is it worth it...for what exactly?

 

Gaming? Not really

General usage? Sure

[Fight Game]

RAID 0 offers no redundancy and doubles your chance of data loss due to a drive failure which is the point Waco was stating.

 

 

but double nearly 0 is still nearly 0. but to answer the original posters question, it's really not worth it for what you are doing.

[Sihastru]

Probability of loosing data from a RAID0 array is P(raid0) = P(hdda) + P(hddb) - P(hdda) * P(hddb), where P(hdda) * P(hddb) is the probability of loosing data from RAID1 array... So let's assume P(hdda) = P(hddb) = 0.008. That's 0.8%. So we get P(raid0) = 0.015936, that's 1.5936%. Almost double. That's because a failing hard drive doesn't imply that the other hard drive also fails. It just implies that all data is lost.

 

Now that's the math part. The problem is, in real life, probabilities don't really matter. It's all about luck, good or bad. You can have a RAID1 with 2 drives, and both could suddenly fail exactly after they are almost full of irreplaceable data (from some random power surge), and you can have a RAID0 with 2 drives and not have any problems for 5+ years. When you're the guy with the failed RAID1 and your friend is the one with the still working RAID0, the probability of your friend mocking you for six months is very high.

 

So if you think that having a RAID1 is safer, it's really not. Especially if your nickname is "Bad Luck FTW".

 

RAID1 is not real backup, real backup is external/off site/web backup. But RAID0 is real performance.

[Waco]

but double nearly 0 is still nearly 0. but to answer the original posters question, it's really not worth it for what you are doing.

Double nearly zero is still significant. It nearly halves your mean time between failure in the best case (only 2 drives).

 

Now that's the math part. The problem is, in real life, probabilities don't really matter. It's all about luck, good or bad. You can have a RAID1 with 2 drives, and both could suddenly fail exactly after they are almost full of irreplaceable data (from some random power surge), and you can have a RAID0 with 2 drives and not have any problems for 5+ years. When you're the guy with the failed RAID1 and your friend is the one with the still working RAID0, the probability of your friend mocking you for six months is very high.

 

So if you think that having a RAID1 is safer, it's really not. Especially if your nickname is "Bad Luck FTW".

 

RAID1 is not real backup, real backup is external/off site/web backup. But RAID0 is real performance.

In real life the probabilities matter completely. You can't just ignore probability and say it's all based on "luck". Sure, when your sample size is near zero, it all seems like luck. If you use more than a few computers over the course of your life you're nearly guaranteed to see a difference.

 

RAID 1 protects against random drive errors and failures (and depending on how you set it up can protect against more than a single drive failure). RAID 0 offers higher throughput (if you need it) at the tradeoff of reliability but no real-world performance improvements for daily use or gaming.

 

Sure, RAID 1 isn't a real backup, but it's still a hell of a lot more safe than running single drives or a RAID 0 array with four times the chance of failure, at best.

Edited November 5, 2010 by Waco