Raid 0's chance of losing data

[Ollii]

Hey, I want to put my 2 samsung F3 1tb's into raid 0. However i know if one HD fails the other comes down with it, but is there actually an increased risk of one of the HD's failing? and if there is how much more likely is it to fail and is it really worth it? All advice welcome, thanks.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

I am thinking of doing a five way raid array and debating between 0, 1 and 6. As far as i know it's the drives themselves that dictate how reliable the mix will be. If both your F3s have been bought at the same time then you can expect them to be fail/ error free for about three years if not five or more

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

Raiding drives doesn't decrease or increase there life span. The life span of a hard drive comes down to how long it takes a read head to work loose and crash into a platter more often than not and I'm not sure you can really predict when or if that will happen. That's how I understood it anyway.

When one hard drive dies, its not that they both die but that because one is unable to function the working one is unable to function as they work as a pair (in raid 0). What you need to do is then distinguish the working one, and either replace the faulty one or get two new drives in raid and copy your data from your good drive to your new raid drives.

Hope this helps. Never used raid, just reciting what I picked up in HND computing year one.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

You can predict failure. That's what MTBF is for

 

[Ollii]

Thanks very much for that, cleared up a lot of stuff that I wasn't sure on. I'll go and raid 0 my drives now then

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Enjoy ^^

 

[marsey99]

i have used a striped array for years and the only time i lost data was because i pushed my oc too far and it killed my os :/

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Overclocking can kill OS? Well you learn something new everyday

 

[marsey99]

it can corrupt your data if you push it too hard yes

i still blame the nforce chipset tbh as its not something i have done since switching to intel but i also use another install to bench now not my everyday os.

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

You can predict failure. That's what MTBF is for

Not saying I'm right but I understood MTBF as an indication of the life you could expect to get from a product before a failure may occur, not so much an indication of when it was actually going to fail. I take your point though.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Well i could never get more than 4.4ghz stable anyway so no worries

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

i have used a striped array for years and the only time i lost data was because i pushed my oc too far and it killed my os :/

Ah, crap. Ollii I'm sorry I got raid 0 an raid 1 confused. I was speaking about mirroring before (raid 1). Ignore my first post.

Yes you'r right to worry, with striping (raid 0) both drives function as one in the way that have your data is copied onto one drive and half onto the other so if one goes down you effectively have only half a drive which is like being in a creek with half a canoe, it aint gona work.

 

[hmmblah]

You can predict failure. That's what MTBF is for

MTBF is only an estimate based on tests. It's not a guarantee at all. Electronics are unpredictable. I've seen drives arrive DOA, last 3 hours, 5 days, 10 years.

High temperatures are the biggest killer of mechanical hard drives.

 

[dugdiamond]

do RAID0 and backup regularly

 

[marsey99]

MTBF is only an estimate based on tests. It's not a guarantee at all. Electronics are unpredictable. I've seen drives arrive DOA, last 3 hours, 5 days, 10 years.

High temperatures are the biggest killer of mechanical hard drives.

google did tests on theirs and they said that running them too cool was just as bad, i cant find the link atm but iirc they said you should run them between 25 and 45c to get the longest life out of them.

 

[hmmblah]

google did tests on theirs and they said that running them too cool was just as bad, i cant find the link atm but iirc they said you should run them between 25 and 45c to get the longest life out of them.

That's true, but it applies more in a datacenter setting. It was really an interesting article. They were referring to drives in the front of a rack mount server. The coldest air conditioned air enters here. Home systems aren't set up with datacenter cooling so it shouldn't be a concern.

Edit: Should add, a cold temperature is bad for drives because it makes the lubricant in the drives "thicker". This makes a greater resistance for the moving parts inside.

 

[S_I_N]

with any type of storgae solution there is always a risk of failure. Hell you could have a bolt of lightning hit ur house and POOF!!!! there it goes. That is why if you have any important stuff on ur drives you cant live without or cant redo then always always always backup ur data. Did I say always???

and yes I know a surge protector should stop that but those can fail as well and you'd never know it .