Which HDDs for Raid 0?

[krusha03]

So I have there 3, 1TB HDDs and I was thinking of using 2 in Raid 0 and the third one as a external backup disk.
Here are the results (note the 4k results are multiplied by 100)

The obvious choice then would be the Segate paired up with either the Samsung HD103UJ or the WD Green. Which one would you recommend? I have heard there are issues with green drives in raid but performance wise it looks descent. Also seeing as the Seagate seems considerably faster should I maybe avoid Raid all together? Which choice would be better then? Since the WD looks better than the samsung in most of the tests. This would be used for games / data since I have SSD for the OS.

 

[Aquinus]

I don't recommend RAID unless you're using the same kind of drives. For example, both of my arrays are either all Corsair Force GTs for RAID-0 or all WD blacks for RAID-5. If you need more speed, you should get a bigger SSD. RAID really should only be used to for redundancy so unless you're running RAID 5 strictly for mass storage, I can't recommend it.

 

[patrico]

Hi, yeah Id have to agree with Aquinus and only be comfortable using RAID 0 with matched HDD's . I really cant recommend unmatched pairs either and every RAID 0 set up have every installed always been matched.

 

[Aquinus]

Hi, yeah Id have to agree with Aquinus and only be comfortable using RAID 0 with matched HDD's . I really cant recommend unmatched pairs either and every RAID 0 set up have every installed always been matched.

They don't *need* to match. You just very well could lose a lot of performance because the drives don't match up and if you rebuild with a different drive, you could run into issues if the new drive is slightly smaller than the last (even if both are the same size, say 1TB.)

All in all, it's just not a good idea. RAID-0 in general isn't a good idea. I did it over two years ago because at the time two 120GB SSDs was cheaper than a single 240GB, that is it, not even for the bandwidth.

 

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

Hi there.

I agree with Aquinus on this one as well. Furthermore, theoretically RAID 0 doubles the speed of the slower disk in the array, but this doesn't account for the seek times and CPU/controller load issues. Restated, if one disk is faster than the other, the speed is limited by the slower disk. Also, in RAID 0 the failure rate is effectively doubled and if one disk fails, you lose all your data because RAID 0 has no redundancy.

I personally think that for RAID the best thing you can do is to use drives that are designed especially for this environment and have the specific build-in features (one such for instance is TLER, which stops the hard drive from entering into a deep recovery cycle and dropping from the RAID setup).

Cheers!

 

[Aquinus]

Hi there.

I agree with Aquinus on this one as well. Furthermore, theoretically RAID 0 doubles the speed of the slower disk in the array, but this doesn't account for the seek times and CPU/controller load issues. Restated, if one disk is faster than the other, the speed is limited by the slower disk. Also, in RAID 0 the failure rate is effectively doubled and if one disk fails, you lose all your data because RAID 0 has no redundancy.

I personally think that for RAID the best thing you can do is to use drives that are designed especially for this environment and have the specific build-in features (one such for instance is TLER, which stops the hard drive from entering into a deep recovery cycle and dropping from the RAID setup).

Cheers!

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

If you're a WD rep, you should contact a moderator so you can have your title updated. We always appreciate it when representatives for different businesses chime in.

 

[RCoon]

What happened to @SuperSoph_WD ? I thought she was our WD rep.
She also happens to share the same IP as you. Confused.

 

[Frick]

What happened to @SuperSoph_WD ? I thought she was our WD rep.
She also happens to share the same IP as you. Confused.

SuperSoph? Mighty_Miro? They have some ego at WD.

 

[krusha03]

I don't recommend RAID unless you're using the same kind of drives. For example, both of my arrays are either all Corsair Force GTs for RAID-0 or all WD blacks for RAID-5. If you need more speed, you should get a bigger SSD. RAID really should only be used to for redundancy so unless you're running RAID 5 strictly for mass storage, I can't recommend it.

The idea is to speed up installation / load times of games and software. My critical data for work etc is always backed up online. Thus I am not concerned with reliability as much as performance, but if the gains are not tangible then there is no point in reducing the reliability. I have seen other people doing raid if different hard drives of the same sizes and even different size of hard drive without problem (of course you loose capacity and I wouldn't do this). I was more worried about people saying that WD Greens can cause problems in RAID due to their power saving features.

I think I will just test it for the heck of it (to satisfy my own curiosity) but stick to then the seagate being my game drive and use the samsung or wd for the rest. I like how quiet and yet still quite fast the WD.

 

[RCoon]

The idea is to speed up installation / load times of games and software.

Boot time is minorly improved by RAID 0, but the only thing really affected by RAID 0 on HDD's is the Read/Write speeds for files. The real thing that affects program screen times and what not is IOPS. As it stand HDD's have pitiful IOPS, so I don't think RAID 0 would improve software loading times much. You might shave off a couple of seconds from Windows boot times, beyond that SSD's are vastly superior. As for game loading times, even on an SSD vs HDD, most games have a difference of a couple of seconds again, so I don't think you'll see an improvement with RAID 0.

The only thing I can see you visually gaining from RAID 0 is file transfer and general read/write times. You can install your game almost twice as fast, but it won't load twice as fast, nor will windows. Not all those things are entirely HDD bottlenecked.

 

[krusha03]

Boot time is minorly improved by RAID 0, but the only thing really affected by RAID 0 on HDD's is the Read/Write speeds for files. The real thing that affects program screen times and what not is IOPS. As it stand HDD's have pitiful IOPS, so I don't think RAID 0 would improve software loading times much. You might shave off a couple of seconds from Windows boot times, beyond that SSD's are vastly superior. As for game loading times, even on an SSD vs HDD, most games have a difference of a couple of seconds again, so I don't think you'll see an improvement with RAID 0.

The only thing I can see you visually gaining from RAID 0 is file transfer and general read/write times. You can install your game almost twice as fast, but it won't load twice as fast, nor will windows. Not all those things are entirely HDD bottlenecked.

All right then I won't even try. I have my SSD for the OS

 

[RCoon]

All right then I won't even try. I have my SSD for the OS

Give it a go for the sheer lulz, run some crystaldisk benchmarks or something so you can see what it's improving. Then at least you know how to do it in future should the need arise.

Yeah ignore the Windows junk i mentioned, I knew you had an SSD but was an autopilot.