What's your view of RAID 0 hard drive configurations?

It seems to be touted primarily for boosting speed. But some people think it's not the best for data integrity.
http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/retreving-data-from-raid-0-hard-drives-559247.html

 

I am more concerned about my hard drives ensuring data integrity than speed.

 

If you are more concerned about data integrity, RAID 1 (mirrored) is the best way to go.

Even with this, you should still make a Windows System Restore Image once you've loaded all your software. Although RAID 1 creates a mirrored backup, if something gets corrupted (virus, malware, etc.) it will affect both drives in the RAID array.

 

Think? There's absolutely no question about it. If you spread a file across multiple drives, and 1 of those drives fails, you lost your file. Period.

Many years ago I setup all my computers with RAID 1 (mirrored), but not anymore. As gman (once again) correctly noted, file corruption, malware, etc. will affect both drives in the array. That is, they provide no protection for the most common drive problems users typically encounter!

If badguys break into your home and steal your computer, you lose both drives and your data. If you take a direct strike by lightning, you will likely lose both drives and your data.

The only real advantage mirrored RAID provides is no downtime in the event of an actual drive failure. This is important for file servers where clients and employees need 24/7/365 access to the data, but most home users don't need that.

Okay, depending on the controller, you MIGHT see (on paper and via benchmarks) a tiny performance gain with "writes" in a mirrored array, but not reads and reads is where actual and "perceived" performance really counts.

Also right off bat, you pay triple for your drive space. And yes, that is "triple". Two drives in the array yield the space of just one drive. Then you need a third drive sitting on a shelf doing nothing (potentially for years) waiting for one of the other drives to fail.

Today's better hard drives are very reliable devices. And as gman noted, having a mirrored array does not alleviate the essential need to keep a current backup of your data any way.

My advice - skip the RAID and buy more RAM, a better graphics card, or perhaps better yet, go SSD.

 

Thank you again, gentlemen.

I am planning on getting 2TB of hard drive in my new custom-built computer that I plan to order today. Would it be better for me to have it all in one disk, or two 1TB disks, or four 500GB disks?

AtlBo said it would be good to have programs on one disk and documents, music, etc. on the other.

I don't know much about graphics cards. What can you tell me?

 

That depends on your definition of "better". More drives means more parts that may fail. But fewer drives means you lose more data if one fails. But since you need to do backups anyway, and ideally should save those backups off-site, or at least not in the same computer, not sure that matters, since today's drive are pretty reliable anyway.

Speed wise, if your OS is on a drive by itself, and everything else is on another drive, Windows can access both drives at once. But we are still talking a few milliseconds here and with lots of RAM and newer versions of Windows, I feel that is moot too. That is, most users just won't notice any improvement.

I've been building computers for many years for me, family, friends, and clients using all sorts of different drive configurations and my current preferred, and what I have on this machine is a 256Gb SSD as my C drive where I have installed Windows 8.1, hardware drivers, and all my applications - including my security programs, MS Office. I still have over 200Gb of free space.

Then I have a 1TB hard drive partitioned into D with 900Gb and E with 100Gb to store all my data files, tunes, backups, etc.

If really concerned with reliability, consider this. Newegg's cheapest 256GB SSD has a MTBF rate of 1,000,000 hours. That's 114 years! The concerns of limited number of writes on first generation SSDs is not a problem today.

Today's latest integrated graphics are much better than they used be and capable of serving most users very well, even on budget boards - as long as there is lots of RAM. On higher end boards with integrated graphics and CPU that supports integrated graphics, it is even good enough for many gamers. But for sure, you can improve over all system performance in today's graphics oriented world with a decent graphics card.

The downside, however, (beside added costs) is power. A GPU (graphics processing unit - the CPU of the graphics system) can easily be the most demanding power consumer in your computer. So when adding a graphics card, you must ensure you have a power supply to support it. Plus, there is added heat with a card over integrated - which may or may not put added demands on case cooling. Most double wide cards exhaust heated air directly out the back. Single wide cards don't so case cooling must push it out.

 

Can you give me some numbers for what you would call "a decent graphics card"? And that's the same as video card, right?

Can you tell what kind of watts you suggest?

 

1. Decent card - see Toms Hardware, Best Graphics Card for the Money, November 2013.

2. Graphics card = video card.

3. Power supply - depends on the demands of your system. Most companies post specs for their cards and provide a "recommended" minimum PSU rating. So do your homework. If the maker does not provide that information, chances are another maker has a similar card with the same GPU and RAM amount and you can go by their recommendations. Or better yet, read my canned text below on selecting and sizing a PSU.

Use the eXtreme PSU Calculator Lite to determine your minimum and recommended power supply unit (PSU) requirements. Plan ahead and plug in all the hardware you think you might have in 2 or 3 years (extra drives, bigger or 2nd video card, more RAM, etc.). Be sure to read and heed the notes at the bottom of the calculator page. I recommend setting Capacitor Aging to 10% and setting both TDP and system load to 100%. These steps ensure the recommended supply has adequate head room for stress free (and perhaps quieter) operation, as well as future hardware demands. Setting Capacitor Aging to 30% will provide an even nicer amount of headroom. And remember, the computer’s components will only draw what they need, not what the PSU is capable of delivering. And the PSU will only draw from the wall what the computer demands, plus another 15 - 30% due to PSU inefficiencies. Buying way too big hurts only the budget. Make sure you buy a supply from a reputable maker and that it is 80 PLUS certified. I prefer Corsair and Antec PSUs. ​