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RAID 0 Question
- Thread starter alexprice
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Yes.
Longer answer:
You have a limited bandwidth on the ATA bus, and the benefits of RAID 0 are way overrated for almost all single-user applications. It only really delivers perfornance benefit on large volume continuous streaming, and in heavy multi-user use. Your CPU us on the slow side already, loading it with software RAID processing is not going to help.
Plus, the chance of losing all of your data to a failure skyrockets with a RAID 0.
You'll get more performance benefit by dividing your data files and your OS/scratch disk space onto separate spindles, and by insuring your current files are on the outermost tracks of the drives One way to do this to partition the drive. The first partition is the fastest, the last partitions - inside tracks - are the slowest. Allocate your file locations based on the speed advantage to be gained.
Longer answer:
You have a limited bandwidth on the ATA bus, and the benefits of RAID 0 are way overrated for almost all single-user applications. It only really delivers perfornance benefit on large volume continuous streaming, and in heavy multi-user use. Your CPU us on the slow side already, loading it with software RAID processing is not going to help.
Plus, the chance of losing all of your data to a failure skyrockets with a RAID 0.
You'll get more performance benefit by dividing your data files and your OS/scratch disk space onto separate spindles, and by insuring your current files are on the outermost tracks of the drives One way to do this to partition the drive. The first partition is the fastest, the last partitions - inside tracks - are the slowest. Allocate your file locations based on the speed advantage to be gained.
On the ATA-33 bus? Is it OK? Maybe. Is it smart? No.
Keep in mind that when you RAID the drives, you will lose all the data on both drives. And when you decide to un-RAID them, you will lose all the data again.
Sounds like you've got way too much free time... maybe consider taking up knitting instead?
I dont mind loosing data, this isn't my main machine, its just for fun. Thanks for the advise, I will try using the secondary IDE bus. The great thing about the way I have set it up at the moment is that I have one volume thats 250ish GB as opposed to 2x 128GB which is what the logic board limits the drives to. I'm also thinking about buying a UIDE PCI controller for faster performance. On another note, this machine's really fast, I've only owned for for a few days, it seems the the CPU usage never reaches full use. Perhaps thats normal. Thanks again. Alex.
Ok, short answer: there will be a speed increase in writing, but not much of one, on the same bus. On the cd-rom bus, there will be a significant performance increase, but the two buses run at different speeds, which can cause problems at boot (I have a RAID with one drive on a PCI card channel and the other on the CD bus; it only boots about half the time, but it works great when it does).
Your best bet is to buy a PCI drive card for $50 and run the drive on separate buses on the card. I would do that, but I have a 200g drive in my Sawtooth as well, which needs the card to be recognized. That will be the most stable and fastest solution.
Your best bet is to buy a PCI drive card for $50 and run the drive on separate buses on the card. I would do that, but I have a 200g drive in my Sawtooth as well, which needs the card to be recognized. That will be the most stable and fastest solution.