Is Anyone Actually Using RAID 0?

[ChillLead]

Is anyone using RAID )? If so, is the performance increase noticable / worth the risk?

 

[jurgen36]

Yes the speed increase is worth it. You can count at almost twice the transfer rate with sata drives. But make very sure that you have at least two backups as the failure rate is also twice that of a single drive. I run 4 sata drives in a raid zero system, very very high transfer speed, has been OK for the last 1.5 years but possible error rate also 4 times bigger. But I also use two completely independent backups. Altogether ten HD's on the system.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[ChillLead]

Will RAID 0 work with IDE drives? Also, is your OS on a RAID 0 drive, or on a JBOD with a separate RAID 0 array for proggys etc.

And the big question: will bad sectors destroy a RAID 0 array?

 

[wahnula]

My favorite quote about RAID 0:

Using a RAID 0 array without backing up any changes made to its data at least daily is a loud statement that that data is not important to you

from:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/single.htm

It is best to use (2) smaller disks and limit their use to OS & apps while storing data elsewhere. I tried it when setting up my new system and yes, it is faster, but the failure rate was too much to live with. But I am not a gamer. If I was I would use (2) 36GB Raptors in RAID 0 while storing data on a RAID 1 array of Seagate 7200.10's.

RAID works on IDE, SATA, SCSI, anything. Read the guide, it is excellent. Pay attention to the JBOD section, as that is never a good idea. Files may span across more than one disk, scary stuff.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/jbod.htm

As for the bad sector, it should not matter, but if you have a drive with a known bad sector I would not recommend using it for RAID 0.

Tony

 

[jurgen36]

The way I do it is as follows. I use 4 SATA 300 Gbyte drives in a raid 0 raid array. Extremely fast indeed. But this drives are backed up daily on alternate drive 0 array's, one array is using two 500 Mbyte sata drives, the second array uses 500 Mbyte IDE drives. I use Acronics True image server software. On switching off the computer, it makes an incremental backup to one array. The next day the backup goes to the other array, and so on. I boot from the 4 sata drives, only takes about 15 seconds before I can use the machine. Depending where bad sectors are they can indeed destroy raid one arrays. Never use JBCD arrays. The possible failure rate is simply to big as your files are unpredictable spread over two or more drives. Also there is practically no speed increase at all. I hope that this covers your questions.
Regards

Jurgen