hard drive layout ideas for my next gaming PC

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited September 2011 in Hardware
I'm planning to build a new gaming PC in the spring, probably from the tax refund unless I win the lottery sooner than that.

I'm thinking of a high end SSD for the C drive (boot / OS drive), probably in a 128 GB size, maybe 256GB.

Then I want to have 2 hard drives in a RAID 1 array (mirrored) for redundant data backup. I was thinking of using 1 TB Seagate Barracuda drives for this, unless some other brand is getting a better reputation for reliability. Ultimate speed isn't important, it's the security / backup copy features that I'm after. My current system has 2 hard drives, but I have to Copy / Paste everything I want a backup copy of. Plus I might sometimes forget to copy everything, so I figure a RAID 1 with 2 drives will do it all for me in one shot. Everything copied, including video game files.

Can RAID 1 be used with 3 hard drives, or does it have to be an even number? From what I read online, most RAID 1 setups are made for only 2 drives.

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    Why get an SSD? A 50GB hard drive should be enough for WoW.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    Yeah but I play Starcraft 2, Team Fortress 2, and only a little bit of WoW these days. Maybe 2-3 hours per week.

    My WoW folder is 31 GB all by itself, with thew Cataclysm expansion and patches.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    SSD's are the most rapidly changing component right now, and pricing is actually getting better fast. I'd wait a little while when the budget is set before planing because what you can buy today vs. a few months from now, will likely be better.

    I highly recommend it for boot, your programs and games and having a spindle drive for your documents, pictures, music and video. SSD is something you should highly consider in your upgrade budget, its amazing how it opens up the rest of your hardware, and the good news for you what you are likely to get will be even better when you go to buy, that's how rapidly its improving.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=91218&CatId=5300

    Would this be a good SSD? Well, I'm sure it's good, but is it one of the fastest currently out there? I'd wait to buy it until the last minute, in case it gets faster or cheaper. I'll have to read some more SSD reviews.

    I also want the new computer to be all USB3 / 6 GBPS SATA, but that won't be hard to find.
  • BasilBasil Nubcaek England Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    RAID is not a backup.
    Mirroring offers no protection from malware/user error/corruption.

    Drop a drive in the new build and another in an external enclosure/NAS/homeserver and schedule regular backups to it.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    If I were in the market for a new one, the vertex 3 is exactly what I would choose.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    What do you mean, RAID 1 isn't a backup? It writes the same stuff to both drives. right? One drive is an exact copy of the other one, right?

    So if that is the case, and I had a bunch of stuff on both drives, I could take one drive out and put it in another PC, and have the same stuff there as I did in the first PC, right?

    That's what I thought RAID 1 is, anyhow.

    I would not use the RAID 1 drives for the operating system, just general storage. The SSD would be the boot drive.
  • fatcatfatcat Mizzou Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    Tim wrote:
    What do you mean, RAID 1 isn't a backup? It writes the same stuff to both drives. right? One drive is an exact copy of the other one, right?

    So if that is the case, and I had a bunch of stuff on both drives, I could take one drive out and put it in another PC, and have the same stuff there as I did in the first PC, right?

    That's what I thought RAID 1 is, anyhow.

    I would not use the RAID 1 drives for the operating system, just general storage. The SSD would be the boot drive.

    no.

    RAID is not a backup. you remove disk B from that array and it's a paperweight

    now a RAID of a RAID would be a backup
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    Technically, it's a step between both of those.

    With RAID 1, yes, the contents of a drive exist on both drives. If you were to shut down the PC and remove one of the drives, technically the data will exist on that drive and will be accessible. Your old array will be degraded, but could be rebuilt by adding the same or a new drive back in. Either way this is NOT how you should do this.

    The point Basil was making is that RAID 1 is a "dumb" mirroring system - not that it's stupid, but that it just does one thing, and that is keep changes in sync across the disk. It will do that even if you didn't want those changes synced. For instance, if you accidentally delete a file, RAID 1 won't be able to restore it for you. If your Windows install gets corrupted or you get a virus that attacks all your video files, RAID 1 won't save you from that - it'll duplicate it to the other disk. That's the point of saying "RAID 1 isn't a backup" - it's a duplicate, and when you say "aw crap, I want that file from 5 days ago," RAID 1 can't do shit for you.

    So no, your plan, right now, is a not a solid idea. RAID 1 isn't backup, it's redundancy: if one of your hard drives dies, you can live on with the other one and not lose your data. Treating it like backup is fallacious. Go ahead and keep your RAID 1 in your desktop, but also get a 1 or 2TB external hard drive and put weekly snapshots of your data on that. When you screw something up, at least you have a chance of recovering an older version that way.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    So if I had 2 drives in RAID 1, and after a while one drive totally failed, and I bought a new drive of the same brand and size and replaced it, what would happen? RAID 1 would somehow know the replacement drive was empty, and would then automatically copy all the data from the remaining original drive to the new one and make it into 2 identical disks again?

    It sounds like having 2 new drives of the same kind and size and doing a lot of Copy and Pasting is the simplest way to have a backup copy of everything. And an external drive also. I have an external 500 GB drive, and it is only plugged in and used when needed, it stays in its box the rest of the time.
  • BasilBasil Nubcaek England Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    You'd have to tell the controller to rebuild the array, AFAIK that's done via options in the BIOS or software for consumer level RAID stuff.

    Copy pasting is simple but there are plenty of apps that would do scheduled backups for you.
    On windows I use synctoy to keep an up to date copy of my work on my homeserver and duplicati for incremental, encrypted snapshots of important stuff to my remote server.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited September 2011
    The drives don't have to be identical. Technically, they don't even have to be the same size. The RAID array will set itself up to be 2 times the smallest size - aka if you put in a 1TB and a 500GB drive into a RAID 1 array, you'll end up with a 500GB RAID 1 array, and your other 500GB on the TB drive will be unused.

    I'm not sure how copying and pasting will be easier for you than for the RAID controller to handle it automatically, but I guess to each their own.
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