SSD Boot Drive plus RAID 1 HDD ??

Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
edited February 2011 in Hardware
Okay, so here it is, I'm finally going to buy a SSD, prices have gotten to that point where I can at least justify buying a 64 GB drive for windows 7 boot, and all of my programs minus my games that take up too much space.

So I'm thinking, for today I've got a storage upgrade budget of around $200, so I might buy a 64 GB Sandforce Driven SSD, or possibly a C300 for about $130, configure it with Windows 7 and all my programs (minus my games). I was also considering adding a 2nd 640 GB Caviar black drive for my HDD subsystem. Currently I am doing local back ups to an external disk, but I'm not particularly in love with it, I might RAID 1 a 2nd disk, and all of my important data for back up, pictures, documents, movies, music, and Steam will all be separate (that occupies about 275 GB for me right now).

So if I use RAID 1 as a back up method, will I see any speed increase for file access times from the mirrored array? There is a ton of conflicting info online, some say its identical for reads as RAID 0 is, others say its not. I'm not concerned with the write speeds, I'm not a content creation guy, but if I could get redundancy with file speed access improvements that would be pretty cool.

Whats Icrontic know about RAID 1, and, as a side topic, any SSD suggestions for a good boot drive?

Comments

  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    Okay, first off Cliff (and I may have just been confused by how you worded your post), RAID is NOT a backup method. Period. End of story.

    I run RAID 10 in my desktop and still back up to an external hard drive. RAID is for failure tolerance and (sometimes) performance increase. If you're relying on RAID to be your backup, you're doin it RONG. Oh so RONG. Very, very RONG.

    As for your speed question, RAID1 will not likely give you any noticeable speed increase. Writes will be the same as a single disk guaranteed. Depending on your controller, you might get a slight increase in read speeds for large files (if it's smart enough to split the reads between disks) but I wouldn't count on it. If you really want a speed increase you would want to go RAID5 with a true hardware RAID controller or a RAID10 (software is fine for this in my experience).

    Really though, I've stressed this before and I can't stress it enough, RAID is not backups.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    In b4 "RAID IS NOT A BACKUP METHOD" edit: i has said this before him ... just researched RAID stuff before I hit submit. Ass

    I really like the C300 but Sandforce is good also. AFAIK, RAID1 will have minimal to actually positive read performance over RAID0 with none of the "one disk went down ... my array, she is a dead" problems
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    Tushon wrote:
    In b4 "RAID IS NOT A BACKUP METHOD"

    You were late.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    ardichoke wrote:
    You were late.
    see edit
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    RAID 1 gives your fault tolerance though? I mean, its basically for local data redundancy? Is that not a reasonable and easy back up method? In fact, is it not better because its real time and does not require a scheduler to re write the back ups to and external disk?

    I do back up my primary documents and pictures off site using cloud storage, but I do like having a local one for one back up just for the ease of getting back up an running in case of a mechanical drive failure. Why would RAID 1 be a bad choice for a local one for one mechanical drive back up?

    Thanks,
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    Tushon wrote:
    see edit

    NO U
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    Cliff_Forster wrote:
    RAID 1 gives your fault tolerance though? I mean, its basically for local data redundancy? Is that not a reasonable and easy back up method? In fact, is it not better because its real time and does not require a scheduler to re write the back ups to and external disk?

    NO. A backup solution is there to protect you not only from hardware failure, but also accidental deletion via human error or malicious actions of other people, viruses, etc. It's also to preserve earlier copies of your data in order to revert in the event of screw ups. RAID does none of these things. If someone gets on your computer and starts deleting shit, it's gone from both drives. If you hork something up, it's horked on both drives. This is why RAID is not a backup. Ever. I can't even tell you how many customers I've had to explain this to. RAID is solely so your system won't crash if one of your drives dies (and, possibly, performance increases).
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    ardichoke wrote:
    NO. A backup solution is there to protect you not only from hardware failure, but also accidental deletion via human error or malicious actions of other people, viruses, etc. It's also to preserve earlier copies of your data in order to revert in the event of screw ups. RAID does none of these things. If someone gets on your computer and starts deleting shit, it's gone from both drives. If you hork something up, it's horked on both drives. This is why RAID is not a backup. Ever. I can't even tell you how many customers I've had to explain this to. RAID is solely so your system won't crash if one of your drives dies (and, possibly, performance increases).

    I completely understand that, I should have prefaced that the really, really important stuff, the documents and pics of the kids are also backed up off site. I'm cool with that, I'd like a local mechanical drive available for redundancy, RAID 1 will accomplish that for me, but there is a conflict in opinion even in our thread, are reads faster, nearly as fast as RAID 0, or no? One says sure, another says nope, its pretty much the way it is all over the net, even the RAID white papers say, well, its faster if the OS supports it, and if the controller can handle it, and yadda, yadda. It seems so conditional, its like a crap shoot.

    Lets ask a different question, lets say I just scrap RAID 1, and go with a RAID 0 array using a service like Carbonite for all my back ups. A pair of Caviar Blacks, what is the real world performance gain you have seen for file access and perhaps game load times? I really wish I could afford a pair of 256 GB SSD's but I just can't today, would a pair of RAID 0 HDD's seem like a nice complement to a fast SSD boot drive? Anyone else configured this way?

    Thanks.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    I'd like a local mechanical drive available for redundancy

    Now you're contradicting yourself by even considering RAID0 which gives no redundancy whatsoever. If even 1 drive in a RAID0 array fails, all your data is lost. (I understand that you're backing up offsite now, but still).

    The theoretical performance improvement for a RAID0 array is N-times increase in read and write speed (where N = the number of drives in the array). Of course, the failure rate of a RAID0 array is also increased N-times. Additionally, theoretical is not the same as actual. Yes, you will get a read and write improvement, but there's too many variables to realistically answer your question accurately. The only way to really tell what kind of performance increase you will get is to set it up and test it.

    As I said earlier, with RAID1 your write speeds will not improve (still have to write all the data to each disk). Your read speeds could (once again, in theory) improve N-times IF your RAID card/driver/software (depending on how you set up the array) actually splits reads between the disks in the mirror set. Still, how much of an actual improvement that you get is dependent on too many factors for me to even make an educated guess about.
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    RAID1 using ICH only performs single disk reading, not striped/alternate reading. (This is true through all current platforms.) It is also NOT actual hardware RAID, so there is a not insignificant CPU cost during disk access - I have tested and verified as high as 20% under heavy sequential write loads. The only controllers which do true alternate read on RAID1 are high end SAS. So you will not see any performance improvement from RAID1.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    Well, there you go. I know much more about theoreticals than I do about actual implementations in this case. So I'll have to go with what he said as far as real-world implementations go.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    Thank you sir, so we are saying the AMD SB850 is not much help?
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2011
    Unless you spent a few hundred dollars on a RAID card, it's fake-raid and probably won't perform any better than straight up software RAID.
  • acadburnacadburn North Dakota USA
    edited February 2011
    I am looking at a similar setup I have a 64 Gb SSD OCZ HD and 2 matched 500Gb Western digital green series HD's is there any way i can use the SSD to boot my OS off of and a few programs and then mirror everything else with my western digital hard drives?

    ive been smacking my head against this problem for a few days now and im getting desperate ill take an explanation a web-sight tutorial anything guys!!! plz help
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited February 2011
    Depends on your motherboard, honestly. If your motherboard supports RAID, it's likely possible. Plug your drives in, define the SSD as your priority boot hard drive, set the other two to RAID, install Windows on the SSD, and define the RAID as your D: drive or what have you. What part of the setup is hampering you?
  • acadburnacadburn North Dakota USA
    edited February 2011
    Snarkasm wrote:
    What part of the setup is hampering you?

    Well honestly I have been getting faught every step of the way... its one of toughs installs i suppose.

    To see my specs it is all under my name and Yes my motherboard dose support RAID

    I am able to boot up on my SSD when all of the hard drives were set as IDE or IED whichever way it is

    But i have 2 problems actually depending on how i try to set it up which one i get depends on order of operation so

    ether windows has a problem during the install and says i cannot install to my SSD drive if the mirrored had drives are allready hooked up

    or If i install windows first on the SSD drive then add the hard drives as a mirror The mirrord drives do not show up

    this is my first RAID install so im newbish in this area.... I do have the raid driver on my jump drive now and that gets me farther through the windows boot procedure but it only shows my SSD drive during the install and will not install onto it for some reason! ive installed windows on it then tried to reinstall i've reformatted the drive and tried to reinstall and nether seems to work!
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited February 2011
    If you:

    1) Plug in only the SSD, set your controller mode to RAID, and install Windows to that first, then

    2) Boot into Windows, make sure it works, then

    3) Hook up the other two drives, go into the BIOS, set up the mirror on the other two drives, then

    4) Reboot into Windows

    Does that work for you? Does your motherboard have multiple SATA controllers? One usually easy way to tell is if your SATA ports are two different colors. If you do, plug the RAID set into one set, the SSD into the other, and make sure the port the SSD is on is set to AHCI and the other ports are on RAID.

    Let us know if it goes wrong somewhere.
Sign In or Register to comment.