Need advice on an affordable raid setup plz :)

[Crazybeard]

Hrmm decided it was time to finally take a chance and go with RAID on my new box. I'm using this PC for strictly high-end gaming and wonder if going RAID with a 4 drive enclosure using striping will be worth the effort and the money.

Also, another question for one just starting out in RAID experimentation is: Can I use 4 7200, 50gb scsi sca 80 pin drives and still get good transfer performance if I use larger blocks instead of byte sizes, using the striping method? I basically want large maps and files to load faster and my swap files if indeed I have to use them to load uber quick.

Reason being, I'm not that rich, so I need decent performance at a reasonable cost for a home user.

Thanks much for any advice or information you can offer up.

Christopher, aka Crazybeard... don't ask.

 

[tekn0phile]

I've read a couple of different opinions about stripe size & performance for desktop raid. basically if you're working with a number of small files (ie for typical windows desktop use) you'll want to set the stripe size close to the default. Since you're more interested in accessing very large files very quickly then you could try setting your stripe size to 1mb or 2mb (aka, really huge). I'd recommend doing some empirical testing of your own in any case, try both methods and see where your results lead you then tune from there.

good luck.

 

[Rols]

You will need a hardware raid controller to notice any significant difference in performance & SCSI Raid controllers are quite pricey - try ebay to find a bargin.

If you use the standard windows raid software feature you will be putting a high load on your CPU & could actually result in poorer performance than no RAID at all.

If your main application is gaming its unlikely that you will see any significant performance improvement by setting up RAID. You be better off using the cash for a good graphics card, cpu & memory.

The cheapest RAID solution would be ATA RAID. I have 2 ATA drive stripped (RAID 0). It works quite well.