RAID 0

Final Chance · Post by **Final Chance** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:54 pm

Have any of you guys ever had more than one hard drive in the same computer and set them up in a RAID 0 system (striped RAID) for the ultimate hard-drive performance?

I've done it with 2 hard drives and found it to be pretty good (Windows 2000/XP software RAID). Maybe there's somebody who did it with 3 or more, to deliver frenetic hard drive speed.

Post by **CPT Worm** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:20 am

I've always want to try a RAID configuration, but that might have to wait until I get some money.

Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:08 am

All I have to say is... Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard drive?

Post by **dosraider** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:14 pm

I wonder what's the use having a RAID in a home PC . Chop'ed files stored over several HDs is indeed a speed boost, but, but why on a home PC? How many times it does happen that you , lets say have to write/read files that extend 10 Gigs on a home PC ?

The largest files my PC has to load are :
-> in gaming: HL2 and HL2Ep1, loading takes about 6 secs, with RAID0 it would be ? what ? 4 secs ? not lesser.
-> videos ? that's 5 gigs max, even when I have to edit vidfiles it would not really boost up the speed as it is more a CPU intensive application.
Read/write a DVD? same, the DVDdrive is the bottleneck, not the HD.

So what's the use of a Raid0 on a home PC ? In industrial environment , yes, time is money there, and the CAD/CAM files can be huge, or backup files for industrial system ... and so on.
High speed LAN servers can benefit from a Raid0, I have a home LAN with some 3 OL'PCs hooked up on my newer PC, but the HD easily catch up with that. Again no use for a Raid0.

Don't forget that a Raid0 is also a (light) extra burden on your CPU, so in fact what you gain on HDs RWSpeed, you loose some on CPU, the speed boost is never what you theorycally(is that a word?) can gain.

Final Chance · Post by **Final Chance** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:08 pm

Later on I looked up on it a little more, and some dudes put their benchmarks online, and RAID 0 only gave about a 5% speed boost in normal computer use.

In response, I just switched back to a normal one-drive system yesterday, and I don't feel any significant speed decreases.

Maybe I was duped by the observer-expectancy effect.

Post by **dosraider** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:20 am

Final Chance wrote:Maybe I was duped by the observer-expectancy effect.

You wouldn't be the first.
As said a RAID 0 is only usefull with large files or high data transfer.

The only situations that can benefit from a RAID 0 in home PCs are sometimes graph editing.
Mostly you can say that it is ideal to set up a server with lots of PCs hooked up, and even here I mean LAN parties or so with 50+ PC hooked on a high speed server.
And of course industrial and office servers who have usually huge data transfers.

Not really for home use, any modern HD can easily sustain the data transfer on a simple home LAN.

Final Chance wrote:Later on I looked up on it a little more, and some dudes put their benchmarks online, and RAID 0 only gave about a 5% speed boost in normal computer use.

That's again more wishfull thinking, the speed boost will only occur when large files are read/writen, a RAID 0 does NOT speed up in any way your CPU nor RAM.

In gaming it will even slow down (a bit)your whole system, once the files are loaded into memory RAID 0 has no use anymore. Every CPU click that goes on RAID 0 check is lost for your game.
That 5% speed boost is only specific for intense HD read/writing, not for CPU intensive applications.