RAID and hard drive set, couple of questions.

[Jeff Troiano]

I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about setting up a RAID, for my new computer.

This is what I want to do.

Single main drive (C:), possible SSD

2 seperate RAID 0 setups, 2x2 7200rpm drives (1 for project files, and 1 for cache)

Then another drive (something like a 1 or 2 tb drive, for storage)

first, would this be an ideal set up for using with CS5?, 2nd, do I need 2 separate RAID controller cards to make the 2 separate RAID0 configurations? Would anyone suggest what to look for in a RAID card, or recommend a card?

Any detailed feedback would be very helpful. Have my future system almost blue printed, with the exception of the drive systems.

Thank you,
Jeff

[Mike McCarthy]

I am not sure why you would ever want two separate RAID0 arrays. If you are concerned about maximum performance, then a single array of all 4 drives would be much more effective. Use a large stripe size for video files and the cache.

I have always had solid performance with a single OS and apps drive, and then a media array for everything else. 2-10 drive in a RAID0 or RAID5 depending on the system and the budget. Spreading your files out across many different volumes makes file management and backups much harder.

[Adam Gold]

I do the same as Mike. On my main editing rig, I have apps and OS on a fast C: drive, then everything else goes on a 7 x 1 TB RAID3, with nightly auto backup to a 4 x 2TB RAID5. Project files as well as both source and rendered video and audio. My secondary editing box is the same, but the workdrive is 4 x 2TB RAID5.

This keeps things simple for file management as well as being fairly fast and safe. Project Manger in Premiere isn't always perfect, so by having all disks set to "Same As Project" it's a simple matter to drag the entire project folder off to a hard drive for archiving when I'm done with the project.

[Jeff Troiano]

Can anyone explain the difference between RAID0 and RAID5? is it just that in a RAID5, on of the drives can fail, and the RAID will still function? I had planned on keeping an external to back up too on a nightly basis.

Truethfully, I qanat sure about having to RAID settle. But someone else mentioned something like that in another thread. So I started a raid specific thread to get info. I like the idea of just one raid set up for performance.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Paul Mailath]

RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

that should tell you everything you want to know - raid0 is fast but it really shouldn't be called raid because there's no redundancy. If a drive fails on a raid0 and you don't have a backup - you're buggered.

[Steve Kalle]

I am a RAID freak and love to use Raid except with SSDs because they are inherently more reliable. With source video that can be reloaded from a backup, having redundancy is not crucial unless the time spent reloading footage is crucial to your work. However, with project files including PPro, PSD, AE,etc..., these files can and do change throughout the work day. Imagine working 8+ hours on a Premiere project and the drive on which it resides decides to die....imagine having a very tight deadline....

With the Media Cache, I always allocate a separate drive.

Here is the setup in my studio PC:
- Intel X25 80GB for OS + Apps
- Velociraptor 150GB for Media Cache
connected to Areca 1680ix - 6x2TB Seagate Constellation ES in Raid 5 for all source & project files
connected to LSI 1068E SAS - 4x1TB Seagate 7200.12 in Raid 10 for encoded files

Several 2TB Seagate LP 5900rpm in external eSata cases and hot-swap cages for backup.

A bit of advice and warning: do not use Western Digital drives due to their firmware which makes the drives spin down constantly. This constant spinning down causes 3-5 second lags when editing and also causes major problems when used in Raid.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

A bit of advice and warning: do not use Western Digital drives due to their firmware which makes the drives spin down constantly. This constant spinning down causes 3-5 second lags when editing and also causes major problems when used in Raid.

That may be true currently, but eventually all of the remaining brands of desktop hard drives will do the same thing.

My experience with Seagate has been thus far somewhat less than enthusiastic. My two current 1TB 7200.12 drives have significantly different access speeds: One with firmware version CC37 has a 16ms access time while the other with firmware CC38 has only 13.6 ms access time. This difference in access speeds makes the two drives less than optimal in a RAID 0 array, with overall disk performance tests (as per the PPBM5's Disk Test benchmark) somewhat slower than expected.

[Steve Kalle]

Originally Posted by Randall Leong

That may be true currently, but eventually all of the remaining brands of desktop hard drives will do the same thing.

My experience with Seagate.....

Its amazing how you can predict the future of the entire hard drive industry.

Go buy 2 7200.12 drives from Microcenter and I bet they will work just fine. I have bought almost 30 Seagate drives in the last year from Provantage, Newegg and Microcenter and not a single one has been bad, caused any issues or spins down like WD drives.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

Its amazing how you can predict the future of the entire hard drive industry.

Go buy 2 7200.12 drives from Microcenter and I bet they will work just fine. I have bought almost 30 Seagate drives in the last year from Provantage, Newegg and Microcenter and not a single one has been bad, caused any issues or spins down like WD drives.

One of the three drives developed S.M.A.R.T. failure after less than three months of use. It was RMA'd for a drive that turned out to be of a different (earlier) firmware revision than the original. Both of the Seagates that I currently have are working well, but the mismatch in access speeds resulted in a somewhat slower than expected performance.

[Craig Coston]

Randall, were they 7200.11 or 7200.12 drives? I've had many issues with .11 drives in RAID 5 arrays, the .11 drives randomly dropping out of the array. I now only run them in RAID 0 mode or as individual drives for storage only.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Craig Coston

Randall, were they 7200.11 or 7200.12 drives? I've had many issues with .11 drives in RAID 5 arrays, the .11 drives randomly dropping out of the array. I now only run them in RAID 0 mode or as individual drives for storage only.

Mine were the 7200.12 drives. When one of the drives in the RAID 0 started failing, at least the Intel software let me know that the array's performance had been degraded.

The problem with dropping out of RAID 5 arrays occur with the 7200.11 series - and to a lesser extent the 7200.12s.

[Taky Cheung]

My RAID-0 is 4 x 1TB 7200rpm drives. It works great for video editing purpose. However, i have 400% higher chance of drive failure in such case. So I have another system running separately as encoding station, record TV, web server, and, backup server. I ran some backup utility automatically to back up my RAID drive every 4 hours. In case of drive failure, I won't lost everything.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Randall Leong

One of the three drives developed S.M.A.R.T. failure after less than three months of use. It was RMA'd for a drive that turned out to be of a different (earlier) firmware revision than the original. Both of the Seagates that I currently have are working well, but the mismatch in access speeds resulted in a somewhat slower than expected performance.

I retested my two working 7200.12 drives again, and discovered the read performance to be much closer to one another than what I previously believed. It turned out that the drive benchmarking software I used (HD Tune 2.55) could not accurately determine the random access speeds of 1TB and larger drives - and its access time test worked at all only for the first 1024 GiB (1 TiB) of larger drives. Using a registered version of HD Tune Pro 4.60, I discovered that both of the drives had a random access time of just over 14 ms.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

A bit of advice and warning: do not use Western Digital drives due to their firmware which makes the drives spin down constantly. This constant spinning down causes 3-5 second lags when editing and also causes major problems when used in Raid.

I discovered from further reading and further testing that this advice is valid if you are using a hardware RAID controller: The Western Digital drives that lack TLER support drop out of the array(s) controlled by the discrete hardware RAID controller (these include higher-end cards from the likes of Areca and 3Ware) even in RAID 0 or RAID 1 mode. These drives work fine, however, on an on-motherboard SATA controller with software RAID support (these on-mobo controllers, even the Intel ICH and PCH RAID, are not true hardware RAID controllers).

[Steve Kalle]

Originally Posted by Randall Leong

I discovered from further reading and further testing that this advice is valid if you are using a hardware RAID controller: The Western Digital drives that lack TLER support drop out of the array(s) controlled by the discrete hardware RAID controller (these include higher-end cards from the likes of Areca and 3Ware) even in RAID 0 or RAID 1 mode. These drives work fine, however, on an on-motherboard SATA controller with software RAID support (these on-mobo controllers, even the Intel ICH and PCH RAID, are not true hardware RAID controllers).

Hi Randall,

I strongly disagree with this statement about compatibility with the Intel ICH raid. I have lost data due to the Intel raid dropping a WD drive from a Raid 0 array even though the drive was fine. The Intel software Raid cannot distinguish between a bad drive and a drive taking too long to respond. It drops the drive and a rebuild is required or data is lost if Raid 0. Also, a pro hardware raid controller can automatically reallocate bad sectors when writing to an array while the Intel software raid cannot. I became aware of this when my 3ware's alarm went off notifying me that a few bad sectors were being written to, so, it was able to hold the unwritten data in cache and find new sectors for this data. This happened about 3 years ago, so, I might not be remembering everything the 3ware software said. However, I recall investigating it and do remember that the Intel raid could not do the same thing.