HHD's with raid0

[wowdoggy954]

I strongly agree with the facepalm comment.

 

@ the OP:

First off, what are your system specs? Secondly, the answer to your question is yes- yes you can do it, and yes it will improve your file transfer speeds and times. The amount of improvement you'll see depends entirely on the type of files you generally transfer. If they are large sequential files, then your transfers will noticeably improve. If the files are mostly small and non-sequential, you wont see any improvements. The reason for that is because the Achilles heel of mechanical HDD's is their slow access times, and RAID 0 doesnt affect those at all.

 

RAID 1 is not the way for you to go, since you're clearly looking for storage space. The reason people use RAID 1 is for data redundancy- every bit of data is written twice, identically on both drives. You only get 1.5 TB of usable hard drive space even though you have 3TB of total hard drive space, and there is zero improvement in your transfer speeds. The upside is you dont lose your data due to a single hard drive failure. Conversely with RAID 0, if either one of your two drives fail, you will lose all your data from those drives. That means that you double your chance of losing everything due to a drive failure. That being said, when was the last time you experienced a hard drive failure? I have had the same mechanical hard drive RAID 0 set up for the last couple years with no problems. I currently boot from a RAID 0 made of three SSD's, and I've experienced no problems with those either. The guy talking about the uselessness of RAID 0 with SSD's had a single bad experience, but I can tell you from my own much larger pool of experience that it is indeed much much faster to use RAID 0.

 

If you decide to go with the RAID 0, let us know and I can help you with figuring out some options for backing up your data too. Hope that helped!!

 

 

 

I just did a secure erase (through the BIOS) on both of my Zalman 128N SSD's, reinstalled Windows in RAID 0, ran my tests and wiped them again and reinstalled Windows on one SSD in AHCI.

 

Two SSD's in RAID 0

 

1000MB Read Write 4000MB Read Write

 

Seq 324.5 153.0 Seq 317.1 169.9

512K 310.6 147.1 512K 302.4 100.7

4K 24.07 86.12 4K 21.03 79.92

4K QD32 50.16 142.4 4K QD32 43.83 147.3

 

One SSD in AHCI

 

1000MB Read Write 4000MB Read Write

 

Seq 210.2 83.68 Seq 208.4 85.08

512K 200.2 81.28 512K 199.1 89.24

4K 22.08 79.24 4K 21.34 82.71

4K QD32 92.10 92.58 4K QD32 89.40 81.26

 

Since 4K are the results that really matter, let's compare.

 

1000MB Two SSD's read 24.07 vs. one SSD read 22.08

1000MB Two SSD's write 86.12 vs. one SSD write 79.24

4000MB Two SSD's read 21.03 vs. one SSD read 21.34

4000MB Two SSD's write 79.92 vs. one SSD write 82.71

 

Two SSD's in RAID 0 takes 22.44 seconds to boot

One SSD in AHCI takes 9.22 seconds to boot

That's 13.22 seconds difference - roughly 2.5 times longer to boot with two SSD's than one

 

I timed with a stopwatch the time from when the Microsoft Corporation loading bar starts until the Windows song plays.

Edited January 16, 2011 by wowdoggy954

[Speedway]

wow, 1st of all your biggest problem is the way you respond to OCC members! Your not going to make many friends by trying to take a dump on every post you don't like. Also when you don't know what a PC term like "ftw" means, use google, instead of telling some1 to learn to type! When you join a forum like this you need to understand that we are going to use shortened terms such as "ftw", or "IMO" so learning what these mean is your responsibility, and the member who types it, types just fine and doesn't need to learn anything! Try taking the anger in your posts from a 10 to a 2 and add some constructive advice, you may find this approach better received

 

The thing is you did have a bad experience with RAID, and it seems to have left an extremely BAD taste in your mouth about it! You were very clear about this in your 1st response to the OP! I'm sorry to hear about the time you lost everything on a RAID 5 setup. THAT SUX, and everyone who has been in the same boat knows that also. But when you talk about losing all of your data in a RAID 5 setup, and another member simply posts that RAID 1 is a solution to losing data, although it isn't exactly what the OP is talking about, it is still good advice!

 

Back on topic TO THE OP - You talked about transferring large files from one RAID 0 array to another RAID 0 array, to that I say look into RAID 0+1! You get the speed, while at the same time keeping all of you data safely copied in 2 different places! If one drive fails in 1 of the stripped sets, you can replace it and not lose anything. The only way you can lose the data entirely on the array is if drives on both sides of the mirror fail, which is extremely unlikely at the same time

Edited January 16, 2011 by SpeedwayNative

[wowdoggy954]

My apologies to everyone for how I came across. But you guys keep telling me that I've basically only tried this once and then gave up. That is not the case - by a long shot. I am told that because I am a new member ignore him (me) and listen to me (you). I've merely shown that RAID 0 isn't always faster - certainly not for a boot disk - at least not in my case. I have provided numbers which prove it but that doesn't matter because you won't look at that, but instead keep telling people that it's the way to go. Did you ever stop and think that maybe we're both right? Why is it that I get a way faster boot time with no RAID at all - can you explain that? I can't - it doesn't make sense but it's true. I'm just challenging people that say RAID0 is faster than none to provide some actual numbers and show me that it's faster instead of just saying it is. I understand that yes, it would be faster for moving large files around - I can see it. But it isn't for a boot disk which is THE most practical way that I can see that RAID0 could be used. That's just my opinion - take it for what you will.

[ebarone]

Whoa, calm down my man, we're all just here to help each other I can respond to most of what you said in your other thread, but I think for the purposes of this particular thread, your numbers back up the RAID 0 recommendation. The OP was asking about transferring files from a data disk. Like I said, and like you proved, if the OP's files are large and/or sequential, RAID 0 provides the best speed. That was the question he asked. In fact, he specifically said he did not want to use the RAID as his OS disk. So lets keep on-topic in this thread and try helping out the OP with the question he asked