Raid

Hey guys, I am looking for information and/or opinions on some RAID options.
I want to Mirror a set of drives I have for data, and another drive just for the OS. Curious if anyone has done this before and if they recommend a hardware, or software RAID. If my RAID set was going to have an OS installed on it, I would select hardware, but I figure since the OS will be installed on a basic disk if a software RAID would do just the same. Hope someone has some input!

 

hardware raid is faster but will cost you more

 

I know hardware RAID is faster, but is it significantly faster? I mean if I have a software RAID will I be able to do anything or will it be excrutiatingly slow? I don't need it to be superfast so...
Plus, the main thing is that if something happens, I have all my data, that still holds true to software RAID correct? Thanks guys...

 

My motherboard (Abit AN7) has a TRUE onboard RAID/SATA controller. Hardware is definatley preferable as it significantly lowers CPU usage, which means apps will run faster.

What type of RAID will you be going for? 0/1/2 or what?

 

speaking only on the RAID level, yes, it will be significantly faster because you have TWO drives. This boils down to 2 read heads and twice the cache.

Now, speaking on the reality level where the PCI bus is concerned, you will not notice much as far as speed is concerned due to the PCI bus limitations. RAID may help keep a sustained rate and the 2x cache may offer a bit more performance but for normal useage, it's not going to be human noticeable. Heavy I/O would be different and probably the only time you would really see any gains. Load times of , say, game maps might be faster on average.

Overall , you will get some performance gain but nothing mind blowing.

 

Kodo, he's talking mirroring, for data redundancy, not striping for speed. So there's no speed advantage.

CPU overhead is still a factor for software RAID, although that's not significant on today's fast processors. And that impacts the system performance overall, not just the RAID array.

Is this a home or business system, and is there data there that is really worth all the bother? Mirroring the drives is something that's almost never done on a home system.

 

so used to people using RAID 0.. my mistake.

 

This will be a RAID 1. It is for my Home system, but I am a computer geek so what do you expect?
I have more than one computer and a wireless network, etc. I am an avid music listener and big CD buyer. I have over 20 Gigabytes of music perfectly organized and carries all CDDB information with each file. I want to be able to make sure I keep it all, I lost much of it once but have since gained it back, plus lots more so I want to keep it.
That is why I want the RAID redundancy but I don't want to spend hundreds on a hardware RAID controller and software if I don't need to. Thanks for the help, I think I may get a simple 35.00 ATA PCI card and setup a software RAID through XP Pro. If someone thinks this config may be problematic, let me know. My computer is pretty fast as it is now.

 

you should always have a good backup system .. RAID mirrors are not meant for specific data backups.

 

Instead of a RAID setup, you could just use a backup program to daily, or weekly, or monthly backup your Mp3's to your second hard drive. This way you won't lose all the rest of the space of the second hard drive to backup 20Gb of files.

 

Agreed...

 

You really think so? 20 GB's of data though? Wouldn't that take a while? There are so many small files?

I should look into it though, anyone know any free backup software that can do it on a schedule?

Thanks!

 

oddly enough, there is a free backup program that comes with all Windows OS's and you can schedule them. It's in the accessories.

 

Would you recommend it? Generally there are better software products out there than what Microsoft likes to provide.....

 

it's free, it works and I use if frequently on my own work pc to backup a few databases nightly.
Completely up to you if you want to use it.

take a look at the backup section
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?id=3&sort=7

 

"You really think so? 20 GB's of data though? Wouldn't that take a while? There are so many small files?"

You can set it up to do it at 1AM overnight or whenever you don't usually use the computer. However, transferring 20Gb worth of files will not take too terribly long.