Raid 5 and ssd OS

[doug2507]

Hi guys,

Just looking for a bit of info/advice with regards to raid and ssd's.

I'm running 4x500gb hdd's (see sig) currently configured without raid. I've got one for os/main, 1 for games, 1 for music and 1 for films. I'm wanting to know if there will be any real world advantages of putting the os onto a ssd. My way of thinking is the only benefit will be when the rig starts using virtual mem. Just how often is this used? Also, am i best just using the hdd's on there own or would raid 5 have its advantages being mirrored and striped? If i'm right, i should get 1.5TB (obviously less) when using raid 5 and can justb partition the array into 3 after for games/music/films. also on the subject, how much room does vista premium 64 take up???

Cheers.....

 

[Rastalovich]

Doug that's one heck of a tough question, as many of the answers are going to be personal based. Mostly through experiences.

With ur raid thoughts, ur looking at firstly speed and secondly redundancy backup (in a sense u really need to have a 500g drive in ur example, on a shelf as a backup to switch in if necessary).

Speed. Well I believe music or movies don't need speed for playback, music for moving around isn't an advantage in raid as the files are so small. Moving movies on the other hand, there is a benefit. IF u move them around alot ?

For game loading u will experience a quicker initial load - the question after that is how much further ur typical game continues to load scenes without u having to put the kettle on in between the action is debatable.

Now comes the personal bit. I hate raid. I would only really use raid on my game installs where I know for sure the saved bits are somewhere else. That's usually something like and 80g for OS and 2x500g for games in raid 0 - no redundancy. Any further than that I dont really put much trust in particularly onboard raid hardware.

In ur situation, myself, a small drive for the OS, on it's own, perhaps a D partition on it to keep drivers and and an image of the OS. Raid0 2 of the 500g drives for game installs and use the others in single use for the movies/music etc.

Do remember this is cos I'm not a raid fan. Others with that much more experience of it working well will ofc advise otherwize.

As far as SSD is concerned, it's almost cheap enough to consider for ur OS install, in my line of thinking of using an 80g drive for the OS, use a SSD.

Dont know about premium 64, but my Ultimate 64 installed today weighs in as 22g, with 8g being the page file. I would imaging premium would be around 11g + pagefile. Perfect for a 32g SSD maybe.

Although ur pc is lashed with memory, like the 4g I play games on, Vista uses the pagefile from time to time for... well it wants to. It dumps stuff on there from time to time, dlls can go in there and christ knows what else.

 

[doug2507]

With ur raid thoughts, ur looking at firstly speed and secondly redundancy backup (in a sense u really need to have a 500g drive in ur example, on a shelf as a backup to switch in if necessary)..

Yeah, understand that. RAID 5 can cope with one drive failing but when a 2nd goes thats it. I intend to run a back up array, like for like, anyway. I've learnt the hard way over the years with a single external as a backup failing, and also 2x100gig RAID=0 on my laptop failing so a good backup system is a priority, especially due to the amount of data i will have.

Speed. Well I believe music or movies don't need speed for playback, music for moving around isn't an advantage in raid as the files are so small. Moving movies on the other hand, there is a benefit. IF u move them around alot?.

Good point. These will be more like a database. Although accessed a lot, especially music, the actual movement of files will be slim so no benefit will be gained by increasing performance of the drives over their standard speeds. The priority for these is backup.

For game loading u will experience a quicker initial load - the question after that is how much further ur typical game continues to load scenes without u having to put the kettle on in between the action is debatable.

Obviously speed is of the essence with gaming and the only critical information needed is the saved data which can easily be put on another drive. Raid=0 would defo be the best option here i think then. 500g is quite a lot though for games so maybe changing to 2x150/300g raptors and using the 2 barracuda's as backup for the other 2 would be the order of the day. I'd get an additional 2 barracuda's and run 4x500g in raid=1 as a backup array.

Now comes the personal bit. I hate raid. I would only really use raid on my game installs where I know for sure the saved bits are somewhere else. That's usually something like and 80g for OS and 2x500g for games in raid 0 - no redundancy. Any further than that I dont really put much trust in particularly onboard raid hardware.

In ur situation, myself, a small drive for the OS, on it's own, perhaps a D partition on it to keep drivers and and an image of the OS. Raid0 2 of the 500g drives for game installs and use the others in single use for the movies/music etc.

Do remember this is cos I'm not a raid fan. Others with that much more experience of it working well will ofc advise otherwize.

As far as SSD is concerned, it's almost cheap enough to consider for ur OS install, in my line of thinking of using an 80g drive for the OS, use a SSD.

Dont know about premium 64, but my Ultimate 64 installed today weighs in as 22g, with 8g being the page file. I would imaging premium would be around 11g + pagefile. Perfect for a 32g SSD maybe.

Although ur pc is lashed with memory, like the 4g I play games on, Vista uses the pagefile from time to time for... well it wants to. It dumps stuff on there from time to time, dlls can go in there and christ knows what else.

SSD seems the way ahead for the os. A nice small compact drive that is blistering quick. I'd want something bigger than a 32g though as i would have most of my apps on it so i'd be looking at running something like a 120g OCZ V2 etc.....

Good bit of food for thought.....

 

[Rastalovich]

Yeah, m8 it's all down to personal preference at the end of the day. 1 thing I would say to any1 tho is to not discount raid completely just cos some1 like myself says they dont like it or whatever. It's definitely something u should experience, maybe with something u dont care too much about, like a game install area, and see how it goes - judge for urself if u like.

With the best of conditions, u may be happy with it, get on well like I know a load of other people do, and perhaps decide to raid-everything ! hehe