2 x 7,200 RPM HDD in RAID0

[Mu5ician]

will this really increase performance? or is it best to just have more RAM?

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Technically yeah, RAID 0 will improve performance. Whether or not you will notice it is another story.

RAID 0 increases performance because files will potentially be portioned off and the chunks will be spread across multiple disks. The benefit of this is that multiple disks perform much more quickly than a single disk. This is because all the disks can independently work on finding their own data and sending it to the controller to be assembled where as a single drive is limited by a single disk head.

The problem with RAID 0 is redundancy. If one of your disks fails, kiss all of your data good-bye.

Not sure what you're referring to when comparing RAID 0 and more RAM, try to clarify this.

 

[Mu5ician]

well, I thought having 2 HDDs would collect data faster to be processed, but I've realised that just upgrading the RAM instead will mean a higher cache for the data. Is that right? so it needs to be a balance so not to bottleneck the potential.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

well, I thought having 2 HDDs would collect data faster to be processed, but I've realised that just upgrading the RAM instead will mean a higher cache for the data. Is that right? so it needs to be a balance so not to bottleneck the potential.

I'm not so sure I understand your logic. The system will see a performance increase by using RAID 0 whether you install more RAM or not. Try to clarify this please...

*Edit*

If you are concerned about RAM being a bottleneck in your current setup (or one you are building), post the system specifications and someone here will comment I'm sure.

 

[Mu5ician]

heh, ok.

Basically after all my confusing questions and statements.......

Is it worth setting up 2 HDDs in RAID 0 given that I have a Q6600 and 2gigs of 1333 ram running vista ultimate. Is the performance boost worth the extra £50 for the HDD?

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Nope, not worth the cash for RAID 0. Access times might decrease by a percentage but you don't access the amount of data often enough that it would require to really see a difference.

Now, if you have a server it's a different story. You'd likely see an improvement in performance, however due to the extremely high risk (compared to other RAID setups) of losing your data it's not even remotely worth it.

If you want to upgrade your HDD look into buying a 10,000 RPM drive.

 

[Mu5ician]

big price tag last time I checked, but I'll take a look.

thankyou very much again :-D

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

You can always buy one with a low capacity to save money, install your OS on the 10,000 RPM HDD and use the other HDD for media storage etc.

 

[Cinders]

If you play competitive online games and you need to load the map first to get weapon selection or you absolutely must have backup storage and plan to run a RAID 1 array or you save a bunch of files every day and the time saved with a RAID 0 array will add an extra hour to your day then yes, otherwise you will not notice the difference.

 

[DelJo63]

RAID-0 adds performance by reducing the wait time for moving the hd arm.

the three factors in hd performance (ignoring caching)

1. arm seek time (the largest factor)
2. the rotational delay (also called latency)
3. the actual transfer time

(3) is fixed by the DMA/memory times
(2) is fixed by the rpm of the drive
(1) varies by the distance moved.

While disk-1 is transferring bytes, disk-2 can be moving the arm or awaiting rotation to
the correct sector.
The more HDs in the RAID-0 stripe, the less waiting required.

Very few users NEED a RAID-0 solution and end up impacting the system reliability
and make backup/recovery a nightmare.

I strongly caution anyone from implementing RAID-0 on a whim.