Well I read this thread hoping to learn more about RAID0 but I didn't learn anything new about it really. I'm going tri GSkill falcon's SSD's which is the most my onboard RAID can handle without slowing down and that will be it for me. Plenty fast without the need for a RAID card.
But I have to say that those coffee bean roasters are great!
This site is not the best source. DJG has a significant amount of hands-on time in many real-world applications of the strategy that is RAID0.
I did run a four disk RAID0 volume for about a year with an XP install. The biggest impact I experienced was in download throughput - major jump in speed. Rendering was also sweetened.
Well, I understand that a single drive offers no redundancy, I don't recommend RAID 0 stripes to run an OS from, for the obvious reason that when you have 2 physical disks, you have a greater liklihood of a disk failure...and we all know with a RAID 0 stripe that if you lose 1 disk you lose all of the data.
Let's assume a user has 2 hard drives. Hard drive A and Hard Drive B. Let's say that Hard Drive A lasts for 36 months without a single incident. Let's say that drive B dies after 4 months. In this example, had the user only had the OS on drive A, it would have theoretically run for 3 years instead of 4 months before disaster occurred.
I'm far more inclined to suggest putting in 2 drives, and running everything off 1 drive and using a second drive to occassionally copy data to. This way, you have some insurance in the event that either drive dies.
In my case im using games and music that i copied from a backup location into the RAID0 drives, even if something goes wrong ill have the backup to re-copy the stuff over.
The thing is though that if you go RAID there is no turning back, seriously why someone that got the hardware and some time not try it?
If something can boost your performance greatly at this moment is the hard drive speed, because it's the only thing that can keep you down.
Rams, graphic cards, cpus etc are all ultra high speed these days, only the hdds are the bottleneck of the new systems.(except if you use an SDD or a very fast hdd)
Go raid is my advice, don't do it if you don't want the challenge or if you are happy with what you have. Time might be important for you and probably it will take at least some to fix a raid+rebuild it if something goes wrong at a point.
I think if the risk factors were exactly the same, it would be something that everybody should try. However, modern SATA hard drives can transfer at speeds of 75-100MB/s...and for the majority of what end-users do with computers...this isn't really bottlenecking them too much. So, I think a lot of people do fall into that category of "they are happy with what they have".
While I could take advantage of 150MB/s transfers when copying a virtual machine hard drive from one folder to another....the fact is that I don't really do this all that often. At 80MB/s a 10GB file would take approx 2 minutes and 5 seconds. With a RAID array at 150MB/s, the transfer time would drop to 1 minute and 7 seconds. If I copied this type of file, 5 times a week, I would save about 5 minutes time. Now, if I did this non-stop all day long, the gains might really be worth it.
But the problem is that if 1 of the 2 drives does fail..you lose everything. Sure, if you had 1 drive and it fails, you lose it all too. But with 2 drives in the mix, the possibility of losing one does increase.
Edit: I'm not saying that RAID 0 should never be used...but I wouldn't consider it's use a requirement or a no-brainer either.
I understand completely. If a user has such a limitation in actual disks, RAID0 is a risky propositon. I have ten disks onboard, including a four disk RAID5 volume. I archive to the RAID5 daily, as I assume any one of my drives will fail now.
This config is itself limiting in what I can do compared to what I want to do. For my purposes, I should probably go to SCSI tape, but equipment cost and capacity relative to occupied space prevents me from doing so. I will soon move my archive volume to an eight drive RAID6. I am considering moving to rack mount at that time.
Wrapping up - RAID0 does provide some benefit, but this benefit must be weighed against risk. Don't RAID0 if you don't have a valid archive mechanism or practice.
Another point: Drive failure is only one consideration. Bit error rate is an even bigger problem for me. As of this date, I am reticent to employ TB drives. I want to, but BER concerns me. Especially on RAID5.
Regarding RAID0 on two drives not providing enough "boost" to warrant the risk - that's why I ran 4 disk RAID0 for a year. BOOOOOST!
But one of the drives failed. A WD250 of some sort. I lost nothing - due to proper archive methodology and implementation.
But again, if you don't really have a need to move data frequently faster than 70MB/s....it might not really be a benefit.
If it was running your OS, you still lost time and had to get everything set back up. For some, that would be more risk then they are willing to accept.
Well i saw a really big difference in loading times, my games open a lot faster and they are loading content faster also.
I don't think that goal, is an extreme one to achieve. I lost maybe a day to fix what i needed and i gained 25-30%, in some cases more, in loading times.
Im ready for any fails that might occur, im using allready backed up files.
I will agree with you though that if you try RAID0 without backups, you have more to loose than you will gain so don't do it.
The rate of I/O increase that RAID0 provides is not limited to the transfer of data from volume to volume or volume to network. My primary application for the referenced platform is video editing and format conversion. The increase in productivity that RAID0 provides is substantial.
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