Building with a RAID setup

Gerb68

I'm Building a PC and I'm wondering about configuring a RAID setup. The Motherboard I'm using is an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe which has a great ability to enable a RAID setup. Am I better configuring a RAID setup or is sufficient Backups and Norton Ghost enough?
If i do use a RAID setup it would be a RAID 1. Does a RAID setup mean that accessing the HDD will be that little bit slower i.e. does it affect the speed compared to an Non RAID setup.
Am I better off configuring a RAID setup or am I best using the other HDD for storage and Backups?

Thanks For Any Help.

Hal1

Raid ftw, why would you want to have extra discs an stuff around. You could use the mirroring method that means the 2 discs are the same and both contain the same data. Some others may elaborate on this...:o

8T8

The speed wont be affected to the point were you'd actually notice anything it's pretty minor assuming the hard drives are both of the same make & model.

Well all RAID will do is take some of the work out of backups as it's cloned on the fly there is just as much chance of something going wrong with the backup hard drive as there is the RAID array so in that respect not much of big difference. {If a RAID 1 array fails then either one or both of the hard drives are faulty but if only one is faulty then you simply replace it and rebuild the array then your back up and running)

I'd go with the RAID 1 array if your tired of making backups though it would be a good idea to backup the most important data to a DVD or something like that every now and then just in case.

Gerb68

Thanx yet again 8T8
Can I ask is it possible to set up a RAID array on 2 HDD separate than my primary HDD. Where all important Data is on one of the 2 separate HDD's and mirrored to the other.
Also Is it common for RAID arrays to fail.

Explosive_Cornflake

That boards (same as mine) is quite good for raids. Yeah, you can have 1 hd for os, and then two seperates for raid 1 for important data. That's 3 discs in total. If the three discs were the same size, I'd consider raid 5. That board does support it.
Myself, I run raid0 and dual[multi] boot a few os's. It's a bit of the pita to get dm-raid going on it(well it has been for me) with the ich7 controller, but I have got it to work. I only use this storage for OS's and installed games, etc. Anything I need to store long term i keep on a dedicated server in the attic(lots of noisy fans in it)

L31mr0d

the perfect setup is to have 3 sata drives imo. Have 2 of them in a RAID 0 then the 3rd as backup. The RAID 0 will give you the speed and 3rd drive will give you the redundancy, you won't have you OS if one of the drives fail, but then imo its good to clean out an OS and reinstall at least once a year for good measure

Gerb68

Thanx Explosive Cornflake. Can you tell me on the P5W DH Deluxe the only way I can utilize the two EZ-Backup SATA Connectors(Orange) is for a RAID array is this correct. If I dont use a RAID array I can only use the other three SATA Connectors(Black) .

Explosive_Cornflake

Those two orange ones are on oddity.
The board has 3 sata controllers.
3 black ones connected to ich7r controller, with numbering something like 1,3,4 or something.
Then there are the red Jmicron , one inside, one esata.
And finally the two orange sil 3114 ports.
Apparently, the the missing ich7r black port is multiplexed through the sil ports into 2. It's pratically usless, and is really an invisible backup option. There is some jumper combination ( I think remove it) that turns one of the sil (port 1 afaik) back into a true 4th ich7 port.
You can get 4 way raid going on the ich7r that way, and then 2 other drives on the jmicron red ports.
There's some cross raid thing mentioned in the manual, but I wouldn't touch that with yours.
Actually, just read the manual (had it beside me), the cross raid is with port one on the sil (EZ RAID) and the three ich7r ports, as I described above, but I remember reading somewhere the manual is wrong on the settings it gives.
Check back later, and I'll post a link describing it in more detail.
EDIT:
I never really answered your question. To do that, yes, it's a gimmicky raid only set of ports (The EZ RAID)
Linkage worth reading:
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20060924103502370&board_id=1&model=P5W+DH+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20070415163405687&board_id=1&model=P5W+DH+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

mewso

I had Raid 0 for my last few builds but my most recent I just didn't bother. It seems to me that this legend of huge speed boosts built up over time when the reality is that it is an insignificant increase and when coupled with the fact that if one drive fails all data is lost it seemed an uneccessary feature to have when you can have 2 drives running seperately. Raid 1 has merit but maybe someone can put me right on Raid 0. Just don't see the advantage in it anymore.

8T8

RAID 0 does still offer speed benefits but I guess hard drives have progressed to the point were speed is not a major problem in so much they are all the same bar the Raptor.

I'd say the average user really doesn't need a RAID 0 array these days power users after the fastest HD speed are the biggest user group as two cheap HD's can match the Raptor though again prices have really tumbled.

You can have your cake and eat it with RAID 0+1 which with 4 HD's combines striping and mirroring.

nibble

8T8 wrote:

RAID 0 does still offer speed benefits but I guess hard drives have progressed to the point were speed is not a major problem in so much they are all the same bar the Raptor.

I'd say the average user really doesn't need a RAID 0 array these days power users after the fastest HD speed are the biggest user group as two cheap HD's can match the Raptor though again prices have really tumbled.

You can have your cake and eat it with RAID 0+1 which with 4 HD's combines striping and mirroring.

Well I wouldn't say speed isn't a problem, storage is the single biggest bottleneck in a modern PC by quite a margin. If you only have 3 disks you could do a RAID 5 - striping+parity, basically a RAID 0 with protection if one disk fails.

Gerb68

This is my point. If storage is a big issue in todays PCs and you use 3 HDDs in a RAID array. Are the RAID advantages that great that you would be basicly losing out on the storage ability of 2 HDDs?

L31mr0d

The way I reason it, it is usually around the same price buying 1 large HDD, as it is to buy 2 smaller HDD's that add up to same amount (1x500GB instead of 2x250GB) Plus the RAID 0 "DOES" give you better performance, but you won't see it from just browsing, it might drop your program install time by 30%, or a rar archive will extract twice as fast.

So for the same price you are getting faster speeds and the same storage. The issue people have with reliability is a conceptual one. In fact of all the people I know that use RAID arrays hardly any of them have had it fail on them. Of those that did, it was because they where overclocking on boards where the SATA ports wheren't locked, which would of caused a normal drive to corrupt regardless of if it was in an array.

Most modern hard drives have AT LEAST a 3 year warranty. Some have a 5 year warrenty. The manufacturers wouldn't offer these if they wheren't very confident that their drives would outlive their warrenty, otherwise they'd be losing loads of money replacing their failing drives every few years.

Also people throw around the phrase "doubles your chances of losing your data" without actually understanding what this means.

If my drive is given a probability of a 1 in 500k chance of failing in the next 5 YEARS, then 2 drives gives me a 2 in 500k chance. The odds are still fairly low. People need to understand, RAIDs don't stress or work your drives any harder than a normal setup, they only double your odds because your doubling your disks.

Plus regardless of having a RAID or a normal setup you should always have a proper backup strategy in place, don't think you are more safe having only 1 drive, and that less can go wrong. Afauk, that drive you have is the 1 in 500k that will fail.

Its the whole terminology that confuses people, its like if we went about our lives stating worse case scenarios to people like "oh you fly twice as much as me each year, that means you're twice as likely of dying in a plane crash"