Raid 0 worth it??

[edgedemon]

I have two Crucial M4 SSD's that Im going to set up in raid 0 for my OS and a couple of essential apps.
I have a Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD for storage and other apps such as steam etc.
Im wondering wether to get another WD 2TB drive to set up my storage drives in Raid 0 as well as Im concerned that as most of my apps will be on the HDD's only having one will be a major bottleneck?
Does Raid 0 give noticeable speed increases for mechanical drives?

Having never used raid, i have no way of knowing how much faster raid 0 is over a single sata drive??

Thx

 

[DRDNA]

I would never ever again run anything but Raid0 unless maybe raid5...lol

I would also Raid anything that had apps running off it...storage I wouldn't raid unless it was a redundant array...Hey but I am a lil extreme.

My bandwidth is great ...I never ever have seen my Raid systems have stutter...lag...paging swap waits...and the likes.

 

[phanbuey]

yeah worth it... i noticed a big decrease from going from 3x500 raid 0 to a single 500 non raid... The raid 0 is zippy.

the scaling is usually 80%... so your raid setup will transfer at about 1.80x faster than your single drive. The seek times are the same... but man... I miss my 350MB/s array :/

 

[edgedemon]

Cool - looks like Im going to buy another drive then

 

[Norton]

If I remember right, it is not recommended to use WD Green HDD's in a RAID setup (something to do with the variable RPM on those drives?)

Check with Western Digital on this issue or keep an eye out for comments from one of our other members who may know more about it than I do.

 

[DRDNA]

this is my array undefrag and a good half full.

If I remember right, it is not recommended to use WD Green HDD's in a RAID setup (something to do with the variable RPM on those drives?)

Check with Western Digital on this issue or keep an eye out for comments from one of our other members who may know more about it than I do.

Nahh he is using the SSD's to raid.

 

[edgedemon]

If I remember right, it is not recommended to use WD Green HDD's in a RAID setup (something to do with the variable RPM on those drives?)

Check with Western Digital on this issue or keep an eye out for comments from one of our other members who may know more about it than I do.

OK, I will wait for clarification and see what google turns up

Thx for the heads up - appreciated

 

[phanbuey]

If I remember right, it is not recommended to use WD Green HDD's in a RAID setup (something to do with the variable RPM on those drives?)

Check with Western Digital on this issue or keep an eye out for comments from one of our other members who may know more about it than I do.

That is worth checking - i know that WD recommends either blacks or the RE4 drives for raid setups.

 

[Norton]

I have two Crucial M4 SSD's that Im going to set up in raid 0 for my OS and a couple of essential apps.
I have a Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD for storage and other apps such as steam etc.
Im wondering wether to get another WD 2TB drive to set up my storage drives in Raid 0 as well as Im concerned that as most of my apps will be on the HDD's only having one will be a major bottleneck?
Does Raid 0 give noticeable speed increases for mechanical drives?

Having never used raid, i have no way of knowing how much faster raid 0 is over a single sata drive??

Thx

@DRDNA

Op was wondering about Raid 0 on the HDD's as well

 

[phanbuey]

@ OP be careful about Raiding SSD's because I think it kills TRIM functionality on the m4s
Although it looks like most people opt for Raid 0 > TRIM

 

[ERazer]

That is worth checking - i know that WD recommends either blacks or the RE4 drives for raid setups.

the new WD Blacks dont have "tler" anymore i think

the WD RE4 are not the expensive anyway they about the same as WD blacks

 

[edgedemon]

@ OP be careful about Raiding SSD's because I think it kills TRIM functionality on certain models.

Although it looks like most people opt for Raid 0 > TRIM

Yeah, but Intel are bringing RAID TRIM support in their driver soon

As for the WD drives

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf

The PDF seems to say that it might be possible

Applications
Desktop PCs, high capacity external storage, and NAS.
Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (RAID-0 /
RAID-1).
- Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or
expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD’s
Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like
enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

 

[phanbuey]

Yeah, but Intel are bringing RAID TRIM support in their driver soon

As for the WD drives

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf

The PDF seems to say that it might be possible

Applications
Desktop PCs, high capacity external storage, and NAS.
Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (RAID-0 /
RAID-1).
- Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or
expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD’s
Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like
enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

Those are intel drives not the M4's. no? Or I understood it to mean for Intel SSD only but i could be off on that.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Friendly advice: if you switch hardware alot, get a dedicated card.

 

[Completely Bonkers]

As JrR says. And also dont RAID green drives.

I would NOT raid0 the data drive, but RAID1 them. Far better to be sure of your data than to gain a small speedup.

It all depends on your usage scenario. But IMO you will gain MORE from a RAMDRIVE for your scratchspace and even improve your RAID0 OS drive, than from RAID0 the data drive. Remember than RAID0 improves throughput benchmarks and is great for certain situations, but in your case, I'm not sure you will really see major benefits... only small percentages. Whereas data security/redundancy of RAID1 might bring more peace of mind.

So i'd go for RAID1 or for a backup drive built into the PC rather than RAID0 your data drives.

My recommendations would be different if you were running a transaction server.

RAMDRIVE and enjoy faster OS and less level wearing on your SSDs http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107670

PS. Post in the RAMDRIVE thread the speeds of your RAID0 Crucial SSDs followed by your RAMDRIVE. I'd love to see the comparison. Put your temps onto the RAMDRIVE. I guarantee you won't be disappointed and will be happy that you have extended the life of your crucials by at least 2x

 

[edgedemon]

As JrR says. And also dont RAID green drives.

I would NOT raid0 the data drive, but RAID1 them. Far better to be sure of your data than to gain a small speedup.

It all depends on your usage scenario. But IMO you will gain MORE from a RAMDRIVE for your scratchspace and even improve your RAID0 OS drive, than from RAID0 the data drive. Remember than RAID0 improves throughput benchmarks and is great for certain situations, but in your case, I'm not sure you will really see major benefits... only small percentages. Whereas data security/redundancy of RAID1 might bring more peace of mind.

So i'd go for RAID1 or for a backup drive built into the PC rather than RAID0 your data drives.

My recommendations would be different if you were running a transaction server.

RAMDRIVE and enjoy faster OS and less level wearing on your SSDs http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107670

PS. Post in the RAMDRIVE thread the speeds of your RAID0 Crucial SSDs followed by your RAMDRIVE. I'd love to see the comparison. Put your temps onto the RAMDRIVE. I guarantee you won't be disappointed and will be happy that you have extended the life of your crucials by at least 2x

Thank you for taking the time to post this

I have 2 x Crucial M4 128GB drives, which will be for the OS and most used apps.
Im not bothered about redundancy, as I back everything upto the the cloud anyway, so I will save my money with the drive
My main concern was that with the 2 SSD's being so fast, but still quite small, all the other apps and data I have would still be slow as they are on the HDD, and a system is only as fast as its slowest part. I was thinking that I would gain a speed bump from putting the HDD's into raid 0, but it is looking like it isn't worth it

Will read into this RAM drive stuff