Raid 0 Array

sweetnightmare said:

this forum is very very helpful...

i recently bought a MSI i5 500G GT780 laptop.. dual HDD raid0 capable..

the thought i am having these past few week is to buy another 500G HDD and enable raid0 (which will make the 2HDD as one, right?)... this is the first time i have encountered the word "RAID"...

due to risk, i am only adding the 500G as additional storage capacity...

What are you trying to accomplish - speed, data security ?? Raid is usually not advised. You may be better off with other options.

Hmm, if you have no objective other than experimenting, go ahead. Make sure you have a good image of your system and your data because chances to screw it up are high.

In these days of SSDs, Raid is not very popular any more because the performance gain is relatively minimal. A SSD outperforms a Raid configuration 10 times. And even for mirroring it is not the best solution for a desktop. Imaging is a better deal. For servers it still has a function though.

If I had your laptop, I would use the second bay for a 60GB SSD and put the OS on that. Then you get a BIG performance boost. 60GB SSDs can be bought for under $100.

SSD performance is in all system areas. Boot times around 15 seconds, calling programs is instant - even big programs and the whole system is just snappier.

The access time to date on the SSD is about 150 times faster than to a HDD and random 4K reads (which the system does over 50% of the time) is up to 10 times faster. There is just no alternative to a SSD for top system performance.

However, the SSD is no help when you access the internet. That is more of a function of the line speed. It also does not help in cases where you need a muscular GPU.

I am a bit amazed that you want to game with a laptop. Laptops are usually not good at games because of their weak graphics.

whs said:

I am a bit amazed that you want to game with a laptop. Laptops are usually not good at games because of their weak graphics.

Cough, Falcon DRX, cough. You can get good gaming laptops... provided you're willing to pay for the privilege.

As for experimenting with RAID, reading up the wiki entries and then following up the links would be more educational rather than a "hands on" test with your own hardware.

Trucidation said:

whs said:

I am a bit amazed that you want to game with a laptop. Laptops are usually not good at games because of their weak graphics.

Cough, Falcon DRX, cough. You can get good gaming laptops... provided you're willing to pay for the privilege.

As for experimenting with RAID, reading up the wiki entries and then following up the links would be more educational rather than a "hands on" test with your own hardware.

You can put as much money as you want into a gaming laptop, it will never match a desktop for the same money. Simple problem is heat that is produced by the GPUs and cannot be properly handled in a laptop. Therefore it will always be a foul compromise.