What do u gain with a raid setup for hard drives ?
- Thread starter tharionos
- Start date
i presume you mean RAID 0?
Basically shorter loading times is the only benefit a gamer will see.
If you mean RAID 1 then increased data security
If you meant any other type of RAID just ask
not sure myself actually ^^
just hear alot of people talking about raid setups , and was wondering if id gain anything from it
can u actually do a raid setup with a SSD ?
yes you can, but you lose TRIM support, which i think may be why my SSD RAID array has lost almost a full windows experience point in about 6 months
Honestly you're best off just googling RAID and reading up on the different types, most good explanations of them list the advantages and disadvantages of both
Honestly you're best off just googling RAID and reading up on the different types, most good explanations of them list the advantages and disadvantages of both
Game Over
New member
imagine your hard drive as an office worker.
With Raid you are adding more office workers to the office.
Now you can do a couple things now that you have 2 office workers.
1. Back up info.
You can use the second worker to do everything the first worker does, same workload, same files etc, so worker 2 has a copy of everything worker 1 has so if worker 1 dies, worker 2 is there to save the day. Now since they are working separately but doing the same thing in duplicate, nothing gets done faster.
2. Share work load.
This is how most people choose to use Raid (0), in this scenario you have the 2 workers working together on 1 of each project, so when a work load comes in, they split up the work, each taking half and get to work at same time. so the work gets done 2x faster.
So in the second type of raid, if you are lets say in a game and at a load screen or starting the game, the hard drive has to search for info then deliver it, this is what you are waiting for in the load screens, but with 2 drives splitting the work, your load times get much shorter. Though you have 2 workers now and they get the work done 2x as fast, they also act as one brain with some of your files or parts of files on one and some on the other. so if a drive fails you are going to be missing half of the total, and with 2 drives you have 2x the chance of having a drive failure.
But thats my take, most of the guys here are Way smarter on these subjects than I, so guys, please feel free to correct me if I got it wrong.
With Raid you are adding more office workers to the office.
Now you can do a couple things now that you have 2 office workers.
1. Back up info.
You can use the second worker to do everything the first worker does, same workload, same files etc, so worker 2 has a copy of everything worker 1 has so if worker 1 dies, worker 2 is there to save the day. Now since they are working separately but doing the same thing in duplicate, nothing gets done faster.
2. Share work load.
This is how most people choose to use Raid (0), in this scenario you have the 2 workers working together on 1 of each project, so when a work load comes in, they split up the work, each taking half and get to work at same time. so the work gets done 2x faster.
So in the second type of raid, if you are lets say in a game and at a load screen or starting the game, the hard drive has to search for info then deliver it, this is what you are waiting for in the load screens, but with 2 drives splitting the work, your load times get much shorter. Though you have 2 workers now and they get the work done 2x as fast, they also act as one brain with some of your files or parts of files on one and some on the other. so if a drive fails you are going to be missing half of the total, and with 2 drives you have 2x the chance of having a drive failure.
But thats my take, most of the guys here are Way smarter on these subjects than I, so guys, please feel free to correct me if I got it wrong.
sn8kedr
New member
Would you say that your load times are then cut in half or is it more of a guide to say they work twice as fast? I'm assuming the load times will still be dependent on other things not just the HDD?
sn8kedr
New member
Agreed - I just chucked in a 60gb SSD on the weekend and loaded the OS......it's crazy fast and it's just an old OCZ Vertex Sata II lol. But what I was thinking about doing is running the SSD for OS and RAID 0 for the 1tb's of storage (2x WD Black 1TB's) to improve game load times etc as I will basically only get OS and programs onto the 60GB SSD.
Firat
New member
no they dont have to be but ideally you would want them to be the same or at least the same "speed" and space i.e 2 x 64gb sta III drives opposed to a 100gb drive and a 64 gb drive as in raid you only have as much as the lowest drive so the 100gb drive would be seen as 64gb if raided with a 64gb drive.
same goes for read and write speeds so get drives that have similar read write speeds as well as size, but it doesnt have to be identical.
but makes life easier if it is.
S_I_N
New member
not really but it does help alot I wouldnt recommend drastic differences between the 2
If speeding up a large storage area is your goal , remember twice as fast as really really slow is still really slow! HDs are loud and power hungry and the more you have the bigger the problem gets. Any single SSD will stomp a pair of HDs in RAID 0,but SSDs price per Gb is way out of line to HDs space per dollar.
A second option, with HD prices being so high and SSDs coming down in price, Is SSD caching of a single fast HD. Read speeds of your most used apps(games)will be cached , and at SSD speeds. Write speeds will be slow like the HD but that's only used when installing programs and transferring files. Most fast HD write speed beat out cheaper SATA 2 SSD write speeds anyway. If you loose your HD you loose all your data, just like any single drive, nothing changes there. If you lose your cache SSD you lose nothing because everything is backed up to the HD.
Many board and SSD manufactures have made this feature available, and I feel it is a better option to RAID 0 on HDs, It's just not doing the intended goal anymore, because faster, cheaper alternatives are available to us.
So maybe look and see if adding a cache SSD to a large HD you already own is within your budget.SSD speeds(faster than RAID 0 HDs) without the danger of losing data spread out over 2 drives
I have had 2 Western Digital 10K Raptor drives in Raid 0 for over 10 years. At that time the performance was phenomenal, but buy todays standards it's really sad. It's pretty much like having a bench grinder in your machine running all the time. I replaced the ($600)array with a SATA 2 Intel 320 SSD ($169) and it's over 100Mb faster, uses 1/10th the power, and cool.(requires no cooling)
Today if I needed more storage space I would use a WD Black HD to get more storage and cache it with this SSD, and buy a better SSD for my boot drive.
A second option, with HD prices being so high and SSDs coming down in price, Is SSD caching of a single fast HD. Read speeds of your most used apps(games)will be cached , and at SSD speeds. Write speeds will be slow like the HD but that's only used when installing programs and transferring files. Most fast HD write speed beat out cheaper SATA 2 SSD write speeds anyway. If you loose your HD you loose all your data, just like any single drive, nothing changes there. If you lose your cache SSD you lose nothing because everything is backed up to the HD.
Many board and SSD manufactures have made this feature available, and I feel it is a better option to RAID 0 on HDs, It's just not doing the intended goal anymore, because faster, cheaper alternatives are available to us.
So maybe look and see if adding a cache SSD to a large HD you already own is within your budget.SSD speeds(faster than RAID 0 HDs) without the danger of losing data spread out over 2 drives
I have had 2 Western Digital 10K Raptor drives in Raid 0 for over 10 years. At that time the performance was phenomenal, but buy todays standards it's really sad. It's pretty much like having a bench grinder in your machine running all the time. I replaced the ($600)array with a SATA 2 Intel 320 SSD ($169) and it's over 100Mb faster, uses 1/10th the power, and cool.(requires no cooling)
Today if I needed more storage space I would use a WD Black HD to get more storage and cache it with this SSD, and buy a better SSD for my boot drive.
