Raid disks?

digilawdigilaw
edited September 2003 in Hardware
Hi, I am a newbie with a newbie question. I've been lurking around this board for a day and have a question. I'm about to use the raid on my new MSI mobo. I have a western digital 120gb ATA 100 hard disk and a 120gb ata-133 maxtor drive. Can these be used in a raid 0? I read the faq and it recomends two idential drives but dosen't mention what happens if I ignore the recomendation. Any ideas? Thanks!

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    If you ignore the recommendation, your life force will get sucked into the drives upon initial spin-up and you will be subject to an eternity of spinning around at 7200 RPM on a metal-dust covered platter.

    ;D

    Welcome to short-media forums, digilaw - the home of the pointless smart-ass reply :)

    ___

    Okay, now seriously:

    The only downside is that you will lose 20gb of capacity on the 120gb disk, and your array will only operate at ATA100 (the slowest drive on the chain). You will probably get better performance just from using the single 120gb ata133. It will be slower, in your case, to use RAID 0.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited September 2003
    How would he loose 20gb of the 120gb disk? They're BOTH 120gb disks prime... :confused:
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Way to read, primesuspect.... Way to read...

    For some reason, I saw the ATA100 and my brain went : 1x120gb disk and 1x100gb disk.

    :banghead:
  • digilawdigilaw
    edited September 2003
    Thanks for the reply! So the array would run slower than if I ran the 120gb ata-133 disk and the 120gb ata-100 by themselves? What I am looking for is more speed for video editing. Thanks!
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Once upon a time I tried mixing 2 different makes of drives in an array and I got no real increase from it. The drives need to have the same access properties and read and write exactly the same, or extremely close to it so that it is an even cycle going back and forth between the 2 drives. If there is any hesitation any chance at an increase in performance goes out the window. I have become so anal in respect to my drives matching that not only do I buy them in pairs but also make sure the serial numbers are at least from the same manufacturing lot if not close to each other.
  • digilawdigilaw
    edited September 2003
    Thank you for clearing that up for me!
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited September 2003
    All sound advise, obviously, you could just give it ago and post a bench, as you might get lucky. It can't hurt to create a quick array and then install an OS and then bench, at least then you'll know.

    My recommendation is, if you've got the time, try it and see what it's like, use Sandra and ATTO to get a better idea of how fast it's running and then post your scores, we'll then be able to give you the definitive answer.

    ...and of course Welcome to SHORT-MEDIA.:wave:
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited September 2003
    Video editing.

    That may be something I know a little about. ;)

    The overall speed difference between ATA100 and ATA133 will most likely be negligable for "feel". A lot of benchmarks do show a small difference but overall it is negligable.

    The old saying goes that you are only as good as your weakest link. Nevermind if the controller is ATA133 or not...the two disks will run at ATA100 speeds. On the EIDE level this will not be a concern vs. ATA133.

    My strongest suggestion is to run the programs and OS off a single disk with the VIDEO disk as the RAID 0 array. It isn't the OS and programs that need blazing speed...it is the raw video data that must be read from/written to the disks.

    As always dual processors will assist greatly with effect and timeline rendering and a third party card such as the Matrox RTX10 or RTX100 will be of a greater benefit. The video card does not play as paramount role in video editing compared to that of gaming.

    Want to know more? Read this.

    Hope this helps. :) And welcome to the forums.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited September 2003
    If you're prepared to spend the $$, a raid 0 array with either some of the 8mb/7200rpm drives or 10k rpm+ SATA/SCSI drives is the way to go for DV. My 2 raid 0 arrays in my dually (4 160gb maxtor 7200rpm/8mb/ata-133 w/sata adapters; 2 2-drive arrays) read & write @ over 100MB/s :eek2:
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited September 2003
    Contrary to my illustrious colleague Geeky1. First go with a 3rd party hardware care made for video editing then go SCSI. The 3rd party hardware card will deliver far more performance satisfaction for the buck.

    SCSI is nice but $$$$$$$$$ Especially when you think about how much drive space you'll need. Medea delivers solid external scsi raid arrays for $3,299 USD for 240 GB and 480 GB for $3,999

    www.medea.com VIDEORAID RTRX
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited September 2003
    MediaMan, are you talking about something like one of Pinnacles PCI DV capture cards?

    btw... digilaw, I'd go with MM's recommendations before my own... he knows a great deal more about this than I do.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    I plan on doing something similar with some 80GB drives... will it be worth it for normal use/gaming? The Highpoint RAID controller is built in to my motherboard, and I plan on using RAID 1.5... Drive 1 is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, the other is a Western Digital...
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Um, could you clarify what exactly RAID 1.5 is?

    If you mean RAID 1, you will experience no performance increase whatsoever. If you mean RAID 5, you will experience a significant performance decrease.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    RAID 1.5 is a setting on my new motherboard (DFI LanParty NFII with Highpoint RAID controller built-in) that gives you both striping and mirroring... half of each drive is used for mirroring and the other halves are striped; it would give me 80GB of storage from the two drives.

    What I meant was, will this RAID configuration be worth it for running games and such, or should I just use 160GB of HDD space? Also, since I'm new at this, please forgive my stupid question: Do the two drives need to be put on seperate RAID channels, or can I plug them into the Master and Slave plugs on the same cable?
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