Operating system on raid or not??

GuldaenGuldaen
edited July 2005 in Hardware
Hey i just bought two western digital 160 gig hard drives and i have a western digital 120 gig.. all SATA drives oh and i have an IDE maxtor running my windows right now.. i was thinking of getting rid of the IDE and running my OS on my 120gig SATA.. or should i run it off my 160gig RAID setup??? i heard it wasnt a good idea to run RAID for your OS.. what should i do? also i have a p4c800-E asus mobo.. is there anyway i can run my 120gig sata and 2-160gig satas RAID both at once? or do i need the controller. thanks

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    if you're talking about raid 0, it's a very, very bad idea. I cannot recommend against it enough. Here's what you get: you double your chances of drive failure (and losing everything), in exchange for a very, very small increase in speed.

    RAID 1 for the OS is a good idea, on the other hand.
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited July 2005
    Just to clarify, prime (as I've never really understood benefits/pitfalls of RAID anything):

    You're talking about the OS only, right? Like what if someone was to install their OS on a regular drive, and run games/apps off a RAID 0 array? Would that also be not worth the potential loss? Could I fit any more questions into a post?
  • GuldaenGuldaen
    edited July 2005
    wow fast response thanks. right now i have IDE maxtor as my main OS drive.. i have a 120 gig WD sata with all my data and my shiny new RAID-0 stripping setup which has nothing on it.. and i benchmarked all of them.

    RAID drive = 118 mb/s
    SATA single = 50mb/s
    IDE = 20-25 mb/s

    so should i put windows on my single SATA and just use RAID for all my games/programs?? im glad at least it all is working
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    I've a lot of experience with RAID 0. I'll say this - whatever you have that's important on a RAID 0 array, ensure you back it up regularly. It can be worth the speed gains, but as Primesuspect wrote, you double the chances of file corruption.

    I finally quit using RAID 0. I got tired of rebuilding arrays and re-imaging the data and programs.
  • GuldaenGuldaen
    edited July 2005
    k im a newb to RAID.. how often and why does it fail??? ive never had a hard drive fail on me in any way really why would a raid so such a thing? and what happens if and when it does fail.. cause its 320 megs id like to put all my mp3s, videos, games and programs on it.. id put the most important stuff like vital docs and photos on my regular sata drive cause who cares about speed with that stuff..

    thanks again
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    It all depends. Some people install and run it for the proverbial 'ever' without failure. If you're like me - frequently tweaking, upgrading, changing cooling configurations, the risk is quite steep. Regardless of your activity with software or hardware changes, it doubles your risk of hard drive problems. It's simply the way it is. If you want to run RAID 0, go for it. It's fun, and there are speed benefits. BUT, I would encourage you to have a backup regimen. You should do that anyway if you have files that you can't afford to lose. I'm a big proponent of high capacity external (USB 2 or Firewire) hard drives. Buy yourself an enclosure, the IDE hard drive of your choice, and regularly image your partitions, or simply copy over the files. It's a relatively cheap insurance.

    (Sorry about going beyond the scope of your topic. Backups have saved my derrier many times. Seems like every month I hear an acquaintance bemoan the fact that they didn't have a backup system after losing years of photos and documents.)
  • GuldaenGuldaen
    edited July 2005
    hmm failure follows me around.. how about this question.. if i run my OS off a non raid sata and my game off the raid sata.. will i get the performanc benefits of the sata or is it mostly the OS
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    After years of experience with RAID, I disavow all ties with raid 0. It's just not worth the failure rate.
  • GuldaenGuldaen
    edited July 2005
    it would probably depend on the system and what you do with it cause apprently some people are having good success.. so far in my testing it truely is doing everything -TWICE- as fast im stoked.. im just unsure with putting my OS on it..
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited July 2005
    I jumped on the raid-0 bandwagon right when the first generation raptors hit the shelves. I was one of the unlucky guys who had one raptor die, and lost all of my data. Fortunatly, I regularly ghost my raid array, to ensure that I can quickly restore if need be. As far at the benefit/risk ratio, that is hard to measure. In two years, I had one failure, and I am probably one of the more rare cases. I do not store anything sensitive on my raid array. I have a dedicated storage drive for that purpose. Things like photos and documents get backed up to DVDR as well.

    I have heard a lot of people say that there is no noticable performance gain. When my raptor died a couple of months ago, I re-imaged a single drive, and ran my system like that while I waited for my RMA. As far as gaming, and overall general system use, I noticed no difference. I did however, notice that windows took significantly longer to boot up, and application launching was a little slower. So as far as performance is concerned, it is faster, but I'd be hard pressed to say that it's a lot faster :) I suppose if you did a lot of very file-system intesive tasks, that you'd experience more of a benefit, however I dont really fall into that category. As far as gaming is concerned, there really is little to no benefit.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited July 2005
    Guldaen wrote:
    hmm failure follows me around..

    You pretty much answered your own question. "Failure follows me around".

    Well if you ever thought that before..... Raid-0 is gonna make you sick to your stomach my friend. Its going to bring a whole new meaning to what "failure" really means into your life.

    Tex
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    Guldaen wrote:
    k im a newb to RAID.. how often and why does it fail??? ive never had a hard drive fail on me in any way really why would a raid so such a thing? and what happens if and when it does fail.. cause its 320 megs id like to put all my mp3s, videos, games and programs on it.. id put the most important stuff like vital docs and photos on my regular sata drive cause who cares about speed with that stuff..

    thanks again

    RAID 0 alone can fail if computer is too busy to accurately store according to RAID 0 specs, if the controller for the RAID is too busy, etc. Too many ways for it to fail even without HD failures-- file system failures can happen too many ways with RAID 0.

    RAID 1 is much better, given a good PSU and conditioned power plus UPS on RAIDed computer or server.

    Photos can be huge files, if very good quality--- think about recovery time to get them back, plus backup time. I rigorously archive my photos on other media than on OS HD, set up base OS on a drive other than in the array and back it up.
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