Vista Raid 0+1 or Raid 5? Striker Extreme

[muarrif]

I need some help please.

I have 4 x 120GB SATA drives

previously i was using RAID 0 and RAID 1 with XP so that I had performance setup for operating system and Striping for storage.

I am installing VISTA now and my new motherboard has the support for RAID 5. Do you think I will benifit from using this or shall I stick to RAID 0

I was reading the following and it says the random write performance is only fair! does that mean it would be slower than RAID-0



System Specs:

Motherboard: ASUS Striker Extreme
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core Processor
Memory: 4GB (4x 1GB) DDR2
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce 8800GTX
Hard Drive: 4x 120GB SATA drives (Seagate)

[Cmptr-Gy-Dv]

Well here are my thoughts on the subject,
There is a big difference between backup and storage,
You only need backup if the files are changing all the time, then raid 1 would be Useful,
If you’re changing files, like writing a book or doing accounting,
Or some kind of work at home, then you need backup,

If you’re saving pictures, games, programs you use,
Then you don’t really need backup, you need storage,
And then raid1 is not what you need,

Raid 1 will use all 4 of your drives all the time, and you lose half your storage
Capacity, if you run raid0 on 2 drives or even 3 drives, then you not only gain
Some performance, but your storage drive is not being used all
The time, so it will last much longer, depending on how often you need
To excess the storage drive,
I run 2 sata drives in raid0 and use an IDE drive for storage,
I find it works out well for my needs,

[pullmyfoot]

but the more you put in raid 0 the more likely one of them is gonna fail, resulting in your data being lost. if you have 3 drives compared to 1, your chances of one failing is higher. raid 5 is slower than raid 0, but its faster than raid 1 and no raid at all.

[famosbrown]

Use RAID 0 for performance, but if one hard drive goes down, you are done since there aren't any parity information and just striping.

Use RAID 1 if you want a lot of fault tolerance. RAID 1 mirrors one hard drive to another, so if one should fail, your system will keep on going like nothing happened. This will degradate performance since you are doing everything twice.

Use RAID 5 for performance and fault tolerance. You will need at least 3 hard drives. All hard drives contain parity bits to rebuild a failed hard drive if one should go wrong. It also stripes all of the data for better performance. In this one, if make sure you use hard drives of all the same size or you will waste space since RAID 5 will only recognize the storage capacity of the lowest hard drive on all of the hard drives in this array regardless of size.

Most people who use array technology at home uses RAID 0 for systems and program files and an third drive for storage...JUST LIKE COMPUTER GUY DAVE said.

Famos

[muarrif]

Thanks guys for all your help.

I have decided to go for the following configuration:

4x 120GB SATA drives

2x 120GB in RAID-0 configuration (running OS and programs)
2x 120GB in RAID-1 configuration (For storage and back up)

[Cmptr-Gy-Dv]

That is exactly what I would have done,
Good choice,
speed and redundancy, can’t go wrong with that,

[famosbrown]

Originally Posted by Cmptr-Gy-Dv

That is exactly what I would have done,
Good choice,
speed and redundancy, can’t go wrong with that,

Agreed...good choice. Nice way to utilize what your machine can do. I still haven't implemented or used most of the advanced features of my motherboard yet ...waste of 200 bucks .

[jabilspt]

Please some advices on changing the set up of my system.

My system:
Dimension E520nIntel® Core 2 E6420 Duo Processor(4MB L2 cache,2.13GHZ,1066FSB)
Memory1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs + 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs = 3GB
Video Cards256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache
Network InterfaceIntegrated 10/100 Ethernet
DVD Drive48X CD-RW/ DVD Combo Drive
Sound CardsIntegrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Hard Drives:1)250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) (OS)
2) 750GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Operating System Vista Ultimate 32bit
This system with two HD (250G and 750G) is running slow and the actual set-up is with No RAID.
Question: Changing to RAID is going to speed up the system?
Which type of RAID has best performance (0; 1)?
How do I change the setting??

Thanks guys

[sr71000]

To effectively run raid you need the same drives. Your motherboard also needs to support it!

If you take two similar drives, and use raid 1 is protects your data (at half the storage space). If you use raid 0, you get the full storage space of the two drives, but some speed improvement. A lot of the posts before say if you run raid 0 and lost a drive you might lose some data.....if you lose just 1 drive in a raid 0 array you lose EVERYTHING on that array! Also..when you have a new question like this...instead of digging up old posts or using other peoples threads you can create new topics They your question is right up at the very top and doesn't get missed! Gets your questions answered quicker!!