RAID 0 is usually a foolish choice for desktops

An interesing comment, the author notes that:

"The price that's paid is two-fold: (1) the difference between the RAID
and a single drive of the same capacity"

I detect a presumption that RAID is more expensive. In fact, it's often
LESS expensive. I've bought Western Digital 1200JB's (7200rpm, 8 meg
cache) for as low as $59. You cannot buy a 240 gig drive for $118.



Lorenzo Sandini wrote:
For the life of me, I can't understand why so many users decide to
install RAID 0 on desktops.


You're overlooking the key element here Ron.

The GEEK factor )

Lorenzo


"Milleron" wrote in message
...

If more proof of this old contention is needed, there's a cutting-edge
review by Anand Shimpi on AnandTech.com:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101

As always in these tests, the real-world improvement achieved with
RAID 0 varies between 0 and 4%, which is simply imperceptible. The
price that's paid is two-fold: (1) the difference between the RAID
and a single drive of the same capacity, and (2) the DOUBLING of the
chance of a hard-drive failure.


...

RAID 1 is another matter entirely, but, as Anand says, "If you haven't
gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place,
and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world
performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in
reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure,
makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop."


Ron

Where is Norton Performance Test?? Could not locate it in my Systemworks

MikeSp
--------------------------------------------
wrote in message
news
Just ran Norton Performance Test on my Asus P4PE system which has RAID-0:

Disk: C: (Seagate 80GB 7200rpm)
Disk Size: 80.0 GBytes
Free space: 61.5 GBytes
Cluster Size: 4 KBytes
File System: NTFS
2xIntel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz
Ave. read speed: 21.3 MB/Sec.
Ave. write speed: 15.8 MB/Sec.

Disk: F: RAID-0 (2 x SATA western digital 60GB 7200rpm)
Disk Size: 120.0 GBytes
Free space: 119.4 GBytes
Cluster Size: 4 KBytes
File System: NTFS
2xIntel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz
Ave. speed: 66.6 MB/Sec.
Ave. speed: 62.0 MB/Sec.

RAID-1 offers fast reads, but slower writes, but RAID-0 is just not
worth the loss of all data on BOTH drives.

Just do backups and u are fine.

"MikeSp" wrote in message ...
Where is Norton Performance Test?? Could not locate it in my Systemworks

MikeSp
--------------------------------------------
wrote in message
news
Just ran Norton Performance Test on my Asus P4PE system which has RAID-0:

Disk: C: (Seagate 80GB 7200rpm)
Disk Size: 80.0 GBytes
Free space: 61.5 GBytes
Cluster Size: 4 KBytes
File System: NTFS
2xIntel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz
Ave. read speed: 21.3 MB/Sec.
Ave. write speed: 15.8 MB/Sec.

Disk: F: RAID-0 (2 x SATA western digital 60GB 7200rpm)
Disk Size: 120.0 GBytes
Free space: 119.4 GBytes
Cluster Size: 4 KBytes
File System: NTFS
2xIntel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz
Ave. speed: 66.6 MB/Sec.
Ave. speed: 62.0 MB/Sec.

Did you install Norton Utilities with Systemworks? It should be under
Extra Features.

Although it does not absolutely ensure that the drives will actually be more
dependable, but the WD SATA Raptors do have a 1.2 million hour MTBF which is
significantly better than any PATA drives--thus RAID is less likely to fail
when using these enterprise drives than non-RAID that uses regular PATA
drives. This is in regard to the question about one of the drives failing
when using a RAID configuration.

MikeSp
---------------------------------------------

"_P_e_ar_lALegend" wrote in message
news
RAID-1 offers fast reads, but slower writes, but RAID-0 is just not
worth the loss of all data on BOTH drives.

Just do backups and u are fine.

In article , says...
RAID-1 offers fast reads, but slower writes, but RAID-0 is just not
worth the loss of all data on BOTH drives.

Just do backups and u are fine.

Most people don't even purchase something for backup, most don't even
know what a tape drive is, most people don't even know what Windows
Update is, most people don't even run the update for the AV program.

So I think those people wont go raid.

If you build an 120+GB RAID-0 Array, do you know that it would cost more
than the price of a new computer to back it up to tape?

Well, DVDs backup? In this days dvds are pretty much cheap, also double
layer. Or maybe just backup valuable data?

Considering many people reinstall OS every season change, it wont be a
real problem to reinstall OS. :-)

BTW, I'm with the same upgrade system formatted in 1996! And I do have
Raid 0 starting in 2000.

Then, again, in normal condition, Raid 0 wont fail.

It's incredible how low level is the understanding and the misconception
of average users. :-(((

It remind of the time when people got worried about PCI and then they
demonized USB and now they do demonize raid 0 :-)))))

Il Sun, 04 Jul 2004 12:32:54 +0000, Leythos ha scritto:

In article ,
says...
Where is Norton Performance Test?? Could not locate it in my Systemworks

It doesn't really matter - the tests only indicate what you can expect
under the test conditions. While they are great for determining burst
performance, they don't really indicate normal use by users during the
period of a workday.

It's the same with anand and hardware sites testing. They really means
nothing in real life computing.

I think Anand is not true.
He used tests just for desktop performance. Minimal disk load. Much more for
graphics, processor and chipset :-(.
I dont agree, that RAID 0 for desktop is nonsense. A lot of people need
great disk subsystem performance. AV editing and many others.

Anand didnt do tests with copy from 1 partition to the second, no DVD
burning and normal office work etc or Database creation and indexing.
I think, that reliability and SMART is now much bigger than before 2-3yrs
and price is good for two smaller disks than one bigger.

Pleva

There is one major flaw in his article. He claims that the biggest possible
stripe size provides the best performance. In fact usually a stripe size of
16K or 32k for two drives is usually optimal. Also Anand doesn't seem to
understand the definition of what a stripe is.

A stripe is the set of data than spans the entire RAID 0 array until it
starts back on the first drive again. A stripe unit is the amount/unit of
data on a single drive in a RAID 0 set until the linear stream starts on the
next drive.

"Milleron" wrote in message
...
If more proof of this old contention is needed, there's a cutting-edge
review by Anand Shimpi on AnandTech.com:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101

As always in these tests, the real-world improvement achieved with
RAID 0 varies between 0 and 4%, which is simply imperceptible. The
price that's paid is two-fold: (1) the difference between the RAID
and a single drive of the same capacity, and (2) the DOUBLING of the
chance of a hard-drive failure.

For the life of me, I can't understand why so many users decide to
install RAID 0 on desktops.

RAID 1 is another matter entirely, but, as Anand says, "If you haven't
gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place,
and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world
performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in
reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure,
makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop."


Ron

"Leythos" wrote in message
...
In article , says...
RAID-1 offers fast reads, but slower writes, but RAID-0 is just not
worth the loss of all data on BOTH drives.

Just do backups and u are fine.

Most people don't even purchase something for backup, most don't even
know what a tape drive is, most people don't even know what Windows
Update is, most people don't even run the update for the AV program.

If you build an 120+GB RAID-0 Array, do you know that it would cost more
than the price of a new computer to back it up to tape?

Tape, god no. Use a SATA drive in a removeable tray ~$220 for 250GB.