RAID setup & performance ?

generalRage1982hrv · 9th Aug 2008, 01:22 AM

hi guys
well i need little help with making raid disk
well i have two disks and i would one of them put to raid
so would that be good and how fast would raid work
data read cache and rest
any benchmark info would be nice to see

Unixlord · 9th Aug 2008, 02:16 AM

I'm assuming you're looking to set RAID0 which provides increased performance without any fault tolerance. The gamer's choice.

You ought to be using two identical "freshly purchased" new disks. Why? Well they should be Identical so you get to use all your capacity. New disks so you aren't putting the array at risk when one drive fails prematurely.

Lots of motherboards today support raid but if yours doesn't do hardware raid you'll have lower performance and higher cpu usage. In that case consider a good quality raid controller.

Burst read speeds are increased along the lines of 50% and average transfer rates will be roughly doubled which is really nice.

Games that read a lot from the HDD such as oblivion, stalker will be a lot smoother (ingame) whiler others will generally (cpu permitting) load faster. Some benchmarks show no gains for loading times simply because the rest of the system can't keep up. With a reasonably powerful rig you'll se gains accross the board.

When doing Raid0 your hard drives are identified as a single large hard disk. All degragmentation applications (including windows' built it defrag) can properly defragment raid0 arrays. Not only do they defrag faster but the results will also be excellent so while regular defragmentation will help you get the most out of any hard drive this is specially true for raid0 arrays!

When setting up a raid0 array you need to pick the right striping. If you do a lot of work with small files then the striping should be smaller too such as 16KB or even less. However I'm going to take a calculated guess that you'll be wanting to work with larger files such as videos, game data files etc, in that case pick a large striping setting.

I hope I have been of some help (and hopefully accurate too).

generalRage1982hrv · 9th Aug 2008, 02:22 AM

one more question
dose mirror disk raid works good ?
well you know that it is on one disk but with two partitions

Adrian Wong · 9th Aug 2008, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by generalRage1982hrv

one more question
dose mirror disk raid works good ?
well you know that it is on one disk but with two partitions

Can you actually do that???

AFAIK, even if it's possible to do RAID on a single hard drive, there's no benefit at all. In fact, its performance should be worse than just using a single drive.

Unixlord · 9th Aug 2008, 02:32 AM

For performance, no good.

generalRage1982hrv · 9th Aug 2008, 02:44 AM

than ok i will get one more 160Gb or 250Gb disk for raid

Unixlord · 9th Aug 2008, 02:45 AM

They'd better both be new disks and the same model and brand.

generalRage1982hrv · 9th Aug 2008, 02:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unixlord

They'd better both be new disks and the same model and brand.

well than that could w8 for next upgrade LOL

Chai · 9th Aug 2008, 06:55 AM

Tech ARP - The RAID Guide

generalRage1982hrv · 9th Aug 2008, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chai

Tech ARP - The RAID Guide

have read that before
but i like to see what people have to say

9th Aug 2008, 01:22 AM	#1 (permalink)
generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer Join Date: 13 Apr 2008 Location: Vukovar, Croatia Posts: 405 Reputation: 111 Rep Power: 3	RAID setup & performance ? hi guys well i need little help with making raid disk well i have two disks and i would one of them put to raid so would that be good and how fast would raid work data read cache and rest any benchmark info would be nice to see __________________ www.technewshw.com

9th Aug 2008, 02:16 AM	#2 (permalink)
Unixlord I'm a regular Join Date: 26 Jun 2008 Posts: 301 Reputation: 98 Rep Power: 2	I'm assuming you're looking to set RAID0 which provides increased performance without any fault tolerance. The gamer's choice. You ought to be using two identical "freshly purchased" new disks. Why? Well they should be Identical so you get to use all your capacity. New disks so you aren't putting the array at risk when one drive fails prematurely. Lots of motherboards today support raid but if yours doesn't do hardware raid you'll have lower performance and higher cpu usage. In that case consider a good quality raid controller. Burst read speeds are increased along the lines of 50% and average transfer rates will be roughly doubled which is really nice. Games that read a lot from the HDD such as oblivion, stalker will be a lot smoother (ingame) whiler others will generally (cpu permitting) load faster. Some benchmarks show no gains for loading times simply because the rest of the system can't keep up. With a reasonably powerful rig you'll se gains accross the board. When doing Raid0 your hard drives are identified as a single large hard disk. All degragmentation applications (including windows' built it defrag) can properly defragment raid0 arrays. Not only do they defrag faster but the results will also be excellent so while regular defragmentation will help you get the most out of any hard drive this is specially true for raid0 arrays! When setting up a raid0 array you need to pick the right striping. If you do a lot of work with small files then the striping should be smaller too such as 16KB or even less. However I'm going to take a calculated guess that you'll be wanting to work with larger files such as videos, game data files etc, in that case pick a large striping setting. I hope I have been of some help (and hopefully accurate too). __________________ Intel E8400 @ 3.6GHz 1.23v load + Zerotherm Zen FZ120 \| ASUS Rampage Formula \| G.Skill PI Black 2x2GB \| Gainward GeForce 8800GT 700/1000/1750 + Zalman VF1000 \| PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W \| Thermaltake Armor VA8003SWA

9th Aug 2008, 02:22 AM	#3 (permalink)
generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer Join Date: 13 Apr 2008 Location: Vukovar, Croatia Posts: 405 Reputation: 111 Rep Power: 3	one more question dose mirror disk raid works good ? well you know that it is on one disk but with two partitions __________________ www.technewshw.com

9th Aug 2008, 02:32 AM	#5 (permalink)
Unixlord I'm a regular Join Date: 26 Jun 2008 Posts: 301 Reputation: 98 Rep Power: 2	For performance, no good. __________________ Intel E8400 @ 3.6GHz 1.23v load + Zerotherm Zen FZ120 \| ASUS Rampage Formula \| G.Skill PI Black 2x2GB \| Gainward GeForce 8800GT 700/1000/1750 + Zalman VF1000 \| PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W \| Thermaltake Armor VA8003SWA

9th Aug 2008, 02:44 AM	#6 (permalink)
generalRage1982hrv ARP Reviewer Join Date: 13 Apr 2008 Location: Vukovar, Croatia Posts: 405 Reputation: 111 Rep Power: 3	than ok i will get one more 160Gb or 250Gb disk for raid __________________ www.technewshw.com

9th Aug 2008, 02:45 AM	#7 (permalink)
Unixlord I'm a regular Join Date: 26 Jun 2008 Posts: 301 Reputation: 98 Rep Power: 2	They'd better both be new disks and the same model and brand. __________________ Intel E8400 @ 3.6GHz 1.23v load + Zerotherm Zen FZ120 \| ASUS Rampage Formula \| G.Skill PI Black 2x2GB \| Gainward GeForce 8800GT 700/1000/1750 + Zalman VF1000 \| PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W \| Thermaltake Armor VA8003SWA

9th Aug 2008, 06:55 AM	#9 (permalink)
Chai Administrator Join Date: 6 Oct 2002 Location: Maranello Posts: 27,884 Reputation: 4630 Rep Power: 81	Tech ARP - The RAID Guide __________________ Chai (Contributor & Forum Admin) http://www.techarp.com/