Do I need RAID ?

Samson

I'm going to be upgrading my CPU/MoBo/RAM, but I'm not sure whether I should get a MoBo with a RAID controller.
I'll be keeping my current IDE drive line up (7200 60GB on primary IDE, CD burner and DVD drives on secondary IDE).
So, the question is: should I bother paying the extra for a MoBo with a RAID controller ?

leeroybrown

I bought a RAID Mob when I built my PC. THye're well worth. The difference in price isn't all that much but you have the capacity for more drives.

Current Config:

Primary RAID Master: 40 Gig HDD (Linux)
Secondary RAID Master: 120 Gig HDD (Windows)

Primary IDE Master: CDRW
Secondary IDE Master: DVD
Secondary IDE Slave: Zip 100

PPC

Well if your going to be doing things like video editing or being a server then get it otherwise you don't really need it.
But its handy to have incase you want to upgrade to it later.

You can always buy a raid card if you need.

Also if your keeping you current line up you can't use it cause you only have 1 h/d

_CreeD_

Originally posted by PPC
Well if your going to be doing things like video editing or being a server then get it otherwise you don't really need it.

? Need is relative. You could say you don't really need anything above an ATA-16 4200 rpm 1gb drive since that'd (eventually) boot windows for you. Just about everything you do on a PC these days requires relatively huge data transfers, and in this your HDD is always your bottleneck, so imho Raid will almost always help (unless you just plan on browsing the web/writing docs on it - but then you might just appreciate having Windows load a few seconds faster, who knows).

MindPhuck

Really,

If you gonna use raid, use it for its intended purpose. Tho, it is handy for extra devices, but thats not what raid is for.

steve-hosting36

RAID gives redundancy not neccessarily performanbce gains, stick to stand-alone SCSI if yu just want speed, but if you want storage that will -never- fall over, use RAID 5 on 3 drives with 1 hot spare - mind you that requires 4 identical SCSI drives, so, as Mindf said, use when required (like in servers, etc)

Steve

_CreeD_

Er....not really true Steve. Raid-0 (Striping) is available on just about all consumer level boards, it is intended purely as a performance booster. You're thinking of Raid -1, mirroring.
Raid-5 is indeed the best mix, but most consumer level controllers dont yet support it.
Setup Raid-0 with 2x WD special edition drives and you'll easily outperform a 10k SCSI (That would cost you a hell of a lot more for the same storage space)

KdjaCL

My board has raid built in and i dont think i will ever use it.

its good for servers but home users shouldnt need to use it imo

kdja

irishguy

its good for servers but home users shouldnt need to use it imo

remember a few years ago who would have taught that we would be using 1 gig+ procs as standard and now they are being put in budget pcs.also that we would have a few 100 gigs of storage space on comps.so never say never cus in 5 years you will be using a 10gig proc with 1TB of h/d space running at 20,000 rpm.

Shinji

Bear in mind that for the vast majority of people, boards with integrated RAID cards simply mean that they have four IDE channels rather than two. Nowadays, that pretty much makes sense - most people have a DVD drive and CD burner, there's one channel gone. Three hard drives and bosh, you need a third channel.

(IDE RAID itself IS nice mind. Two-way stripe with parity stripe over three 120gb drives.... niiiiiiiice. Performance is excellent off that too.)

zAbbo

If you have raid of course use it, you`d be mad not too. Stick your hard drive on the RAID IDE Connection(IDE2,3), put a DVD drive on Pri Master and a CD Writer on Sec Master and have the ability to burn on the fly. Also allows the use of a total of 8 drives, which is handy.

I have a RAID board and will defo buy another as well.

sutty

Yous all seam to think that he is buying a array of drives to go with his new RAID card......he's not, he's talking about the high point controler on motherboards......it will only do two types of RAID....

RAID 0= (not true RAID) "striping with out party" This allows you to add to drives together......giving you the combined space on the drivers....there is a proformance incress with this...but it is only about 10% at most. Requires 2 drives

RAID 1= "Mirroing or duplexing" this is where the second hard drive is used to store the same data as a back up of the first......when or if the first drive fails, the second will kick in and let you use you PC untill the first is replaced. Requires 2 drives

RAID 0+1 = is both of the above and requires more drives....I beleave 3 is the min for it.

I just found this site which is all about RAID


but as said above, you are better off just placing the hard drives on the high point and the CD/DVD/CDr drives on the IDE.....and not setting up any arrays....

astrofool

the extra cost(about 15-20) is well worth getting the Raid version for, selling on wise, and just in general use.

It would be like advising everyone to get a mini atx + mini tower case, cos what they have atm doesn't need anything more.

half the stuff u get with a computer u don't NEED, do u really need to spend 20 more for a slightly faster chip ? If he ever does need RAID, the 20 u spend when building saves all the hassle, and at worst the Raid card is faster than the built in ide of the chipset, + u can use 8 devices.

WhiteWashMan

Originally posted by sutty
RAID 0+1 = is both of the above and requires more drives....I beleave 3 is the min for it.

parity = 2 disks
mirror = x2 disks
parity = mirrorred = raid 10 = 4 disks minimum


the answer is no.
you dont need raid.
its nice if you want to make sure you dont lose data, but no, you dont need it.

zAbbo

ok he doesnt need RAID but having a RAID controller(high point) is nice as it enables extra HDDs and frees up 4 spaces on the trad IDE channels.

Get RAID

_CreeD_

Originally posted by sutty


RAID 0= (not true RAID) "striping with out party" This allows you to add to drives together......giving you the combined space on the drivers....there is a proformance incress with this...but it is only about 10% at most. Requires 2 drives

I benchmarked the first RAID 0 setup I created, with 2 IMB 75Gxps on an Abit Kt7a. Hdtach reported a 10% decrease in Access time, and ~30% increase in sustained transfer rates. Well worth it imho.