Advice on RAID0 set up

Dussed

Hey guys.

Never done a raid setup before, so just wondering what's the way to go about this.

My current set-up is:

• OCZ Agility 3 - 120gb (OS)
• Seagate Barracuda - 750gb (Steam/Videos etc)

What I was thinking of doing is buying a few more OCZ Agility 3s, and putting them in RAID0, but is it possible to not have my current drives touched by the RAID array? I don't really fancy re-installing everything.

I'm sort of clueless about RAID, done some research on it before, hasn't really clicked too well.

Thanks in advance

RobTang

It depends on your raid controller really, the onboard motherboard controllers are no great and you pretty much have to re-build the array if you need to do any modification or if a drive fails.

Raid-0 you generally have to start with a clean array anyway.

Your best bet it to image your system drive, set-up raid-0 then re-image the system drive onto the new array.

Please bare in mind that Raid-0 makes array less reliable with each drive you add, if a single drive fails you loose everything, so make sure you have some sort of backup strategy for data you cant afford to loose.

Dussed

Regarding the reliability of adding more drives to the RAID array, that's why I'd like to keep the OS separate. The only things that'd be going on the array would be a hell load of games. (my steam folder on the hdd is 400gb exactly right now)

I've just checked my mobo specs, and it does support onboard raid, but would it be worth getting a dedicated raid controller?

• SATAII controller integrated in Intel® P67 (B3) chipset
- Up to 3Gb/s transfer speed.
- Supports four SATAII ports (SATA3~6) by P67 (B3) PCH

• SATAIII controller integrated in Intel® P67 (B3) chipset
- Up to 6Gb/s transfer speed.
- Supports two SATAIII ports (SATA1~2) by P67 (B3) PCH
- SATA1~6 ports support RAID 0/1/5/10 mode by Intel P67 (B3) PCH

^ from spec page of mobo.

Might it just be worth getting another Barracuda or 2 instead?
I've got the room to accommodate 7 drives in the case and my mobo can handle 6 sata connections, taking away another 1 because of the dvd drive.

fwor

I did some testing of on-board and the cheaper type of RAID add-on card a couple of years ago, and I didn't like what I found.

The problem came when simulating a failure of one drive, and then trying to recover the situation (this was a RAID-1 setup). I could never get either to work properly. It seems that you really need a dedicated hardware-based device for good results, and even then you can be in real trouble if the controller dies, as there is no precise standard for how the disk should be written to (i.e. if you can't get the same make/model of controller you may not be able to recover).

I don't think you're likely to get significant performance gains with an array of SSDs - had you considered using the Logical Disk Management that's built into Windows to span a logical volume over multiple drives instead?

RobTang

Dussed wrote: »

I've just checked my mobo specs, and it does support onboard raid, but would it be worth getting a dedicated raid controller?

For Raid-0, nope.

A pair of a couple of drives on the 2 sata-3 ports and tbh I dont think you'll gain much from having steam on raid-0 SSDs, esp given the cost; a pair of hybrid drives would probabaly suit it better.

InsideInsurance

What are you actually trying to achieve? Are you sure that your pinch point is currently your HD speed?

paddyrg

RAID-0 is, to my mind, usually the wrong answer no matter what the question. Are you *sure* you want to put all your eggs in one basket?

RobTang

paddyrg wrote: »

RAID-0 is, to my mind, usually the wrong answer no matter what the question. Are you *sure* you want to put all your eggs in one basket?

What if the question is: How do I get faster read/writes and all my important data is backuped to a raid-6 nas and / or clould or consisits of data I dont care about losing ie steam games.

esuhl

fwor wrote: »

I did some testing of on-board and the cheaper type of RAID add-on card a couple of years ago, and I didn't like what I found.

...you can be in real trouble if the controller dies, as there is no precise standard for how the disk should be written to (i.e. if you can't get the same make/model of controller you may not be able to recover)...

I've heard of that happening several times. Which makes RAID 1 (mirroring) completely pointless with a motherboard-based "fakeraid" implementation.

paddyrg wrote: »

RAID-0 is, to my mind, usually the wrong answer no matter what the question. Are you *sure* you want to put all your eggs in one basket?

There's no need to put all your eggs in one basket with RAID 0. Either don't store any valuable data in it, or make sure you back it up... which you would be doing anyway!

RobertoMoir

Dussed wrote: »

Hey guys.

Never done a raid setup before, so just wondering what's the way to go about this.

My current set-up is:


What I was thinking of doing is buying a few more OCZ Agility 3s, and putting them in RAID0, but is it possible to not have my current drives touched by the RAID array? I don't really fancy re-installing everything.

I'm sort of clueless about RAID, done some research on it before, hasn't really clicked too well.

Thanks in advance

What made you choose RAID 0 if you know little about RAID arrays? Typically the only question that RAID 0 is the right answer to is "how can I ensure that I spend a lot of money on multiple disks only to lose all my data off all those disks if something goes wrong with one of them."

Dussed

InsideInsurance wrote: »

What are you actually trying to achieve? Are you sure that your pinch point is currently your HD speed?

My system doesn't really have a "pinch". Well, it does, but it's beyond the point where it's noticeable. I just seem to basically be using up a lot of space, and want to get a few more drives for storing a lot of data on, mainly steam games and video recordings. (I do game commentary, footage doesn't stay around long before it's edited, uploaded, then deleted.) Main problem I have right now is that the SSD is nearly full, and I keep having to manage it, and the HDD only has ~100gb left free. The steam folder is over 400gb now, so I don't really know what do to. Playing games from the HDD doesn't produce any notable speed decreases while playing either.

paddyrg wrote: »

RAID-0 is, to my mind, usually the wrong answer no matter what the question. Are you *sure* you want to put all your eggs in one basket?

This:

RobTang wrote: »

What if the question is: How do I get faster read/writes and all my important data is backuped to a raid-6 nas and / or clould or consisits of data I dont care about losing ie steam games.

RobertoMoir wrote: »

What made you choose RAID 0 if you know little about RAID arrays? Typically the only question that RAID 0 is the right answer to is "how can I ensure that I spend a lot of money on multiple disks only to lose all my data off all those disks if something goes wrong with one of them."

Go on youtube, search "SSD Awesomeness".
and before you say it, no, I don't want to go that far.