reloading XP on another raid0 drives

Merc-DoD-Merc-DoD-
edited March 2006 in Hardware
If I uninstall my two sata drives that are in raid 0 (2 wd raptors with os) and I install two new hard drives (sata in raid 0), will I be able to reinstall my raptors at a later date and be able to boot from it or will i lose the array and not be able to get at old data? I guess what I am saying is I would like to switch from 1 array to another at will just by unpluging one set of drives plugging in another set of drives, set up array in bios and then boot. Then swap again , set up array in bios , and be able to boot.

Comments

  • FlintstoneFlintstone SE Florida
    edited March 2006
    It's doable, but why? There are much more "elegant" solutions.
  • Merc-DoD-Merc-DoD-
    edited March 2006
    just want to be able to fall back to other boot up/hard drives in case I forget to save some important data or I dont finish and want internet access.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited March 2006
    Couldn't you just get a single big 250-300GB drive for ~$100 and use it as a backup for the whole thing?
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    After running RAID-0 for many years and beleiving it was faster for my OS I was in for a big surprise when I found that it did nothing other than load my OS faster. After the OS is loaded it is actually slower than loading on a fast single drive. Every RAID-0 array no matter how tweeked and with even the most optimal stripe / cluster arrangement you sill loose out. This is due to 2 things, seek time and file sizes used most often. Your OS and most apps and even files are too small to take advantage of the benefits of RAID-0 because it does absolutely noting for the small reads and writes used 99% of the time. Next your seek times suffer more often than they are even kept the same in RAID-0. Seek times are never ever improved. Next you drasticly increaser the odds of failure and loss of all your data unless you backup regularly to a separate drive. My best advice would be to get a 74GB WD Raptor for your OS and another of the same or if you need the space one of the 150GB Raptors for all else.

    I am running a 75GB Raptor for my OS and all associated with it, another 74GB Raptor for all my apps, 2 80GB SATA 3.0 drives for my files in RAID-0, a 200GB SATA drive for backups and a 36GB Raptor with a single 10GB partition housing a 4GB swap file. This is much faster all around than any RAID-0 I have ever run everything on. This includes a RAID-0 array with 4 drives!
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited March 2006
    raid 0 does not improve read write access. It does speed up read I believe but not that much. Raid 5 does increase both. Raids are not designed to increase performance they are designed to increase data recoverability, except raid 0 which just allows you to make 2 drives look like 1. What actually increases performance with raid is the controller and the dedicated cache memory on the controller. More you can cache the faster reading and writing appear to be.
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited March 2006
    Gobbles wrote:
    raid 0 does not improve read write access. It does speed up read I believe but not that much. Raid 5 does increase both. Raids are not designed to increase performance they are designed to increase data recoverability, except raid 0 which just allows you to make 2 drives look like 1. What actually increases performance with raid is the controller and the dedicated cache memory on the controller. More you can cache the faster reading and writing appear to be.

    Everything I've read says that in a perfect world (ie: one where you see the theoretical benefits from practical applications) RAID 0 is best for read / write access (data is written to / read from multiple disks at the same time so you get twice the throughput). RAID 5 is quick for reading but slow for writing as the parity information has to be calculated on every write. Having said that, in a typical desktop system you're unlikely to see any of those benefits / disadvantages in any tangible way.
Sign In or Register to comment.