Raid Worth it

DarthZash · 30 Jul 2014

I was reading up on RAID.

What would be the performance if I raid 2 (2 tb drive WD Black) 64 mb cache, 7200 rpm.

LMiller7 · 30 Jul 2014

I assume you are talking about RAID 0. Specifying RAID without the level isn't really meaningful.

Theoretical maximum performance gain would be somewhat less than double the transfer rate but even benchmarks won't achieve that. Gains under real world conditions will be more modest, how much depends on many factors. I would not recommend RAID 0 for general use.

There are some serious downsides to RAID 0. A big one being that if one drive fails you will lose all data. While backups are always important this becomes even more so with RAID 0. Not maintaining regular backups with RAID 0 is asking for trouble. Data recovery from RAID 0 is often challenging, even for data recovery professionals.

If you want better performance an SSD for the OS and applications would be much preferred.

DarthZash · 30 Jul 2014

its just to run my games faster and the transfer rate. but its not a huge performance upgrade then its pointless

Lady Fitzgerald · 30 Jul 2014

X2 on an SSD being a much better choice. And even then, it won't actually make your games run faster (i.e. have more FPS). It will make booting and program loading much faster, however.

As LMiller7 pointed out, if you lose one drive in RAID 0, you loose everything. Backups will protect against that only as long as they are kept up to date (btw, multiple up to date backups are essential even if not using RAID 0). Also, the chances of drive failure increases with each drive you add.

RAID 0 was useful back in the days when HDDs were slower and smaller. With SSDs becoming increasingly affordable, the need for RAID 0 has plummeted.

essenbe · 30 Jul 2014

I agree with everyone above. I have run raid and it was more trouble than it was worth. The few seconds it may save you in loading a game is not worth the risks. Yes, it will load the games faster but you will not get any better frame rates. With the risks involved, in my opinion, it is hardly worth it. A single SSD would be much faster than a raid0 and much less risky. As I said, I have run Raid before and may run it again, but for completely different reason than you are doing it. SSDs are cheaper now and quite affordable and would give you better results for what you want, than a Raid 0 of your current drives, and much lower risk.