What are the benefits of RAID

[Boins]

Quick question

I''m going to have to buy a new HDD

I'm considering buying two and setting them up in a RAID config

now my problem is I'm mistrusting in HDD cos of the amount of times they've fubar'd (F****D up Beyond All Recognition) on me and I've lost data I wanted to keep.



I want to buy 2 250gb HDD, will RAID prevent those oh so wonderful data losses (does one act as a backup drive)

is there really any benefit for someone like me who just uses the computer for games, would I just be better off buying one SATA 250GB HDD and using that to install games on and backing stuff up, whilst keeping my OS onmy current IDE 80GB HDD?

 

[k.jacko]

In answer to your last sentence; probably.
Raid mirroring will utilise 2 like disks and write the same data to each disk simultaneously. So if one breaks, the other 'mirror' disk takes over with very little if any noticeable effect.
Striping is where you use both disks to write data to, thus increasing throughput of data to make your system a little faster. Although it aint very noticeable. Raid 5 (i think its 5) uses mirroring and striping, so you get redundancy and performance, but, unless i'm mistaken you need a min. of 3 disks for that.

Bottom line though, buy a decent quality hdd. I've only had a couple fail on me in all the time i've been building pc's etc.

 

[LinkedKube]

I'm running 3 raptor drives in raid 0, cut my start up time i half, from 1min 10 secs, to about 35 secs, games load faster as well.

 

[k.jacko]

I'm running 3 raptor drives in raid 0, cut my start up time i half, from 1min 10 secs, to about 35 secs, games load faster as well.

Boins, fyi, Raid 0 = striping. Raid 1 = mirroring.

Speed increase is fair enough, but supersmashbrada is using raptors, and they're about the fastest drives for raiding that you can get.

/me jealous

super.....are your raptors the 72Gb ones?

 

[LinkedKube]

I'm running 3 150GB raptors, would have gotten 4, but going to by a p5k3 board this week.

 

[k.jacko]

I'm running 3 150GB raptors, would have gotten 4, but going to by a p5k3 board this week.

Nice one

 

[gguerra]

For speed AND fault tolerance look at Raid 10 but it requires 4 drives and a capable Mobo. Is this a server? If it's not why dont you look at a good backup solution such as Acronis True Image.

 

[LinkedKube]

Raid 1+0 is ok. If you're looking to make a back up of what's running. I'm lookin for performance only really.

 

[DelJo63]

RAID is primarily a feature for server systems to avoid down time from an HD
failure. Even if you go with RAID-1, you STILL need a backup plan, as raid is not
a substitute for backups.

SO, first solve your backup issue(s) and then reconsider the cost/benefits of
Raid.

btw: A backup strategy requires:

1. a means to create the backup to at least one alternative device
2. a means to boot the downed system
3. the original software used to create the backup or at least a compatible program
4. documentation and practice in restoring a backup

Frequently, a restore is required only because of software errors in the configuration
rather than a failure of the hardware. In such cases, a total backup of the
HD is unnecessary; eg for recovery of a Windows system, you only need
an image of c:\Windows