Striped drives at DVinfo.net

Trey Perrone · March 31st, 2003, 07:13 PM

hey after a fruitful FFR of XPpro, once again the reign of stability has found its way into a MS product. now i am thinking of striping two 80 GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration. anyone have any experience with this kind of situation? i know back when i took win2k adv svr courses they suggested this would increase speed on a server, although not providing fault tolerance. im thinking this may help with speed of video files, however minor it may be. just curious if anyone has any input.

Mike Rehmus · March 31st, 2003, 07:23 PM

If you have the faster EIDE drives . . . 7200 RPM with some sort of buffer, you don't need a RAID for speed with regard to keeping up with single or dual stream RT DV. You might if you want to handle 5 or more streams.

RAID does increase your chances of problems that cause file loss just because you have 2 drives that contain your data instead 2 drives with date stored on one or the other. In one case you lose everything if you lose a drive, in the other, you only lose one-half the data.

I have SCSI, SCSI RAID, EIDE and EIDE RAID on a single machine with no problems in terms of operation. The RAIDs are formed in software through the Win2000 capability.

Trey Perrone · March 31st, 2003, 07:53 PM

yea they are 80 GB WDs 7200, currently my mobo only supports upto ata66, although the WD disk has a util that claims they run ata100...tests at pcpitstop.com have clocked the cached speed of all drives around 267.19 MB/s and uncached at 5.1 MB/s- 6.37 MB/s. those are pretty good stats, ofcourse i do have the system clocked from 800 to 880 mhz, so the bus speeds have been upped a little. i would be using the standard IDE ports of the motherboard and enabling RAID 0 thru XP thru MMC, similar to your setup. I completely understand the issues of no fault tolerance as i have taken server courses and have worked as a tech, but i have never really used RAID before. Are you using RAID in a fault-tolerant config?

the whole reason i was doing this was to create one logical drive. i will not be using a fault tolerant config at this time. I was considering spanning the volume as well, simply to create one drive. Then i figured it might be a slight performance increase with the striped.

Christopher Go · April 4th, 2003, 02:04 AM

I don't think software based RAID is as fast as a hardware based one, as in a dedicated RAID controller card. But if all you want is a logical drive then go for it. Despite the apparent higher risk of failure with RAID 0 I have yet to experience any problems with my setups - /me knocks on wood - and I've been using hardware based RAID 0 with every computer I've built since '98.

Lars Siden · April 4th, 2003, 03:22 AM

Hi,

I also use HW Raid, works like a charm. Will expand my raid set with a 120gb Serial ATA drive next week.

Software raid >> I have used SW raid under W2K, worked good, BUT, when I reinstalled W2K, I couldn't mount my SW raidset again...160gb data lost.... maybe just bad luck..

// Lazze

Christopher Go · April 4th, 2003, 06:04 AM

Hey Lars, where are you buying your serial ATA drives from? I'd like to look into that for an upgrade sometime in late April, early May.

Lars Siden · April 4th, 2003, 06:27 AM

Hi Christopher,

I live in Sweden, here there are several stores that have Seagate Barracuda IV 80/120gb S-ATA drives in stock. I've also heard that WD will release their SATA drives in april.

120gb for about 240 USD

// Lazze

March 31st, 2003, 07:13 PM	#1
Trey Perrone Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 155	Striped drives hey after a fruitful FFR of XPpro, once again the reign of stability has found its way into a MS product. now i am thinking of striping two 80 GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration. anyone have any experience with this kind of situation? i know back when i took win2k adv svr courses they suggested this would increase speed on a server, although not providing fault tolerance. im thinking this may help with speed of video files, however minor it may be. just curious if anyone has any input. __________________ Trey Perrone

March 31st, 2003, 07:23 PM	#2
Mike Rehmus Wrangler Join Date: May 2002 Location: Vallejo, California Posts: 4,049	If you have the faster EIDE drives . . . 7200 RPM with some sort of buffer, you don't need a RAID for speed with regard to keeping up with single or dual stream RT DV. You might if you want to handle 5 or more streams. RAID does increase your chances of problems that cause file loss just because you have 2 drives that contain your data instead 2 drives with date stored on one or the other. In one case you lose everything if you lose a drive, in the other, you only lose one-half the data. I have SCSI, SCSI RAID, EIDE and EIDE RAID on a single machine with no problems in terms of operation. The RAIDs are formed in software through the Win2000 capability. __________________ Mike Rehmus Hey, I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel!

March 31st, 2003, 07:53 PM	#3
Trey Perrone Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 155	yea they are 80 GB WDs 7200, currently my mobo only supports upto ata66, although the WD disk has a util that claims they run ata100...tests at pcpitstop.com have clocked the cached speed of all drives around 267.19 MB/s and uncached at 5.1 MB/s- 6.37 MB/s. those are pretty good stats, ofcourse i do have the system clocked from 800 to 880 mhz, so the bus speeds have been upped a little. i would be using the standard IDE ports of the motherboard and enabling RAID 0 thru XP thru MMC, similar to your setup. I completely understand the issues of no fault tolerance as i have taken server courses and have worked as a tech, but i have never really used RAID before. Are you using RAID in a fault-tolerant config? the whole reason i was doing this was to create one logical drive. i will not be using a fault tolerant config at this time. I was considering spanning the volume as well, simply to create one drive. Then i figured it might be a slight performance increase with the striped. __________________ Trey Perrone

April 4th, 2003, 03:22 AM	#5
Lars Siden Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sweden, Stockholm Posts: 469	Hi, I also use HW Raid, works like a charm. Will expand my raid set with a 120gb Serial ATA drive next week. Software raid >> I have used SW raid under W2K, worked good, BUT, when I reinstalled W2K, I couldn't mount my SW raidset again...160gb data lost.... maybe just bad luck.. // Lazze __________________ Sony HDR-CX130,Canon 5DMKII,i7 930@4.0, 12gb memory, 3x SSD + 2x1Tb(stripe), Geforce 480, Dual 24", Win 7 x64

April 4th, 2003, 06:27 AM	#7
Lars Siden Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sweden, Stockholm Posts: 469	Hi Christopher, I live in Sweden, here there are several stores that have Seagate Barracuda IV 80/120gb S-ATA drives in stock. I've also heard that WD will release their SATA drives in april. 120gb for about 240 USD // Lazze __________________ Sony HDR-CX130,Canon 5DMKII,i7 930@4.0, 12gb memory, 3x SSD + 2x1Tb(stripe), Geforce 480, Dual 24", Win 7 x64

April 4th, 2003, 02:04 AM	#4
Christopher Go Major Player Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Honolulu, HI Posts: 429	I don't think software based RAID is as fast as a hardware based one, as in a dedicated RAID controller card. But if all you want is a logical drive then go for it. Despite the apparent higher risk of failure with RAID 0 I have yet to experience any problems with my setups - /me knocks on wood - and I've been using hardware based RAID 0 with every computer I've built since '98.

April 4th, 2003, 06:04 AM	#6
Christopher Go Major Player Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Honolulu, HI Posts: 429	Hey Lars, where are you buying your serial ATA drives from? I'd like to look into that for an upgrade sometime in late April, early May.