Does RAID 0 Make a Difference??

Will this really improve performance on the G50??

 

Yes, it should improve boot times and application access times, although it will vary in how much difference it makes. I have mine set up in RAID 0 because that was the feature that put me over the edge for the purchase! =)

 

Raid 0 makes a difference for sequential file transfers. It doesn't help with file access times, in fact sometimes they are slightly higher (very slight as in not noticable) So transfering files, boot ups and game loading levels will be a bit faster, only thing is if one drive dies, all your data is pretty much gone. I personally use raid 0 on my desktop for my windows install and applications. If it suits your purpose then go for it.

 

General rule the bigger the file the better the boost, the smaller the file the lower the boost, up until a point where it can be worse actually.

I had to copy my adobe folder the other day and it has like over 50,000 small files in it and it took forever to copy even tho it was only like a 2gig file.

I recomend it for people who edit video and things like that, for just games and os boot times I do not think its worth it for the higher risk of failure and more power/heat used since 2 drives will be running instead of just 1.

 

I use RAID controller card on my desktop workstation.
It gives me an edge while working with heavy weight programs like Adobe Illustrator or Solid Works.
I do not think notebook can gain anything since it does not have RAID controller

 

umm... not true... -_-

the G50 has a RAID controller

 

My bad
What I intended to say, that while I use SCSI hardware card with RAID configured HDs on my workstation that gives me advantage, notebooks have only RAID with SCSI emulation.

SCSI hardware is not cheap BTW. Everything comes with a price

 

Here's some numbers for you. I was just benching my own G50V and got these results.

 

Benchmarks are a poor way to show what raid 0 can do, or rather I should say what it does since its 100% the best situation possible.

A more real life benchmark would be to time your boot or time a few programs/games loading, and probably some video encoding on both setups to see the difference.

 

QFT ( 10 char )

Here is another persons experience with Raid configurations.

 

OP asked if it would improve performance, what I posted was just an attempt to prove that it does in fact improve the performance of read/write speeds.
The test is using 50Mb segments, perhaps I should up the size for more accurate results..

 

IMHO....benchmarking != performance. While they are indicative of each other, they are not the same.

 

There is a gap between desktop builders and notebook owners (just can's say 'builders'')
Desktop builders far more conservative and NB owners more enthusiastic.
Do not ask me 'WHY' - I do not know

 

if it means anything to you, RAID 0 brought my score in windows experience index from 5.1 to 5.9 (for HDD of course)

 

No it means nothing

 

Can you explain to old ramshackle what does it mean 'windows experience'?

 

Vista has an 'experience rating' basically if you don't get a 5 you're going to have a BAD TIME, y'see. It's a built-in 'benchmark' of sorts. And the scale can change as new hardware comes out, so it's quite useless IMHO except to make you feel warmnfuzzy.

If you want to know more, for some reason (sorry I can't avoid being sarcastic when talking about vista LOL):

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/458117.aspx

Lil edit: it's actually useful to determine whether the vista computer you're working on is a piece of trash (overall score under 4). Otherwise I stick to my original statement.

 

Thank you.
Since it is for Vista only, I feel good.

 

For a few more $$$ I would love to have a G50V configuration with 1 x16gb solid state drive and one standard HD. IMO that would be better than offering a RAID controller and 2 HDs. That would give you 10gb for the OS and 4gb left for the swap file. With 2gb to spare for temp files.

 

Has anyone done that? It would certainly kick the uKnowWhat out of RAID 0.

 

Barebone lappy with SSD is in the list of things to do when price will be right.

 

didnt think so, but i'm still getting accustomed to vista (thought i'd give it a try, instead of going directly to xp)

So I'm still learning about all the new tools

 

That 16GB solid state drive is actually closer to 15Gbs. Then you must consider that the initial install of vista/drivers/pagefile/bloat, will be greater than 16GBs. Then you also have to consider installs which make registry edits and take up even more space of the C drive.

 

OK!!!
32Gb SSD + 4 months of waiting
In 4 months price of 32Gb SSD drops down and = price of 16Gb SSD today
Deal?

 

With a modern hardware RAID controller RAID 0 performance will *always* be at least equal to or greater than that offered by a single disk. As you load up the IOps RAID0 will be increasingly faster, with a proper controller and proper disks it is actually possible to achieve more than double the performance of a single disk in certain conditions.

Laptops do not have proper controllers, and do not use the right type of disks to make full use of them anyway. As such, RAID0 is really offering a small performance boost in certain conditions, and/or an increase in capacity.

There are SSD's and there are SSD's. Laptop SSD's are generally focussed on reducing weight, power consumption, heat generation and noise. As such while their access times are usually very good, their burst read/write performance is only comparable to platter drives, and for sustained throughput platter drives are still usually superior. Do not expect a SSD to transform a system - it might make it a bit faster, but it's not going to set your world alight.

 

I have never head of Raid 0 offering more than double the performance of a single disk, or seen it happen. Also the G50V has a Intel ICH9 controller the same one used in many laptops whats wrong with that?

 

As I say, with a proper modern controller with a decent cache on proper modern SAS disks can queue requests in such a way as to wait to perform the actual write until such a point as the head happens to be in the right area anyway. You're only talking a couple of percentage points, and the moons have to have aligned correctly and a goat sacrified fresh that morning for it to happen.

What I have never seen with modern controllers though is a degredation of performance compared to a single disk, no matter how big or small the IOP. Usually you will see around a 70-90% increase in performance over a single spindle, depending on workload.

The ICH9 is alright for an onboard fakeraid controller. However in terms of error handling, stability and performance it is usually eclipsed by relatively cheap ($200-$250) controllers. Having had 'issues' with ICHxR chipsets over the years I no longer use any fakeraid implementations where drive redundancy actually matters and would need to be relied upon. Not an option of course in laptop environments.

 

Softraid controllers cannot be relied upon AT ALL for data reliability. That cannot be stressed enough! This is such an important point!