Should I Raid 0 my G50v?

I've never had a Raid 0 computer before. I've read most people found it to be minimal gains for huge increases in data loss risks. I'm not too worried about data loss, all my stuff is backed up onto an external HDD.

If you've done it, was it worth it?

 

Yeah. It's nice having 1 volume instead of dividing everything between 2. Besides, if you don't move your laptop anywhere (as I do) then it is quite worth it. Because doubling .002% is still a very small percentage of error.

 

I have two hard drives in my G50, but never really considered RAID0. The only increased risk you'd have is that if one drive fails you would most likely lose all the data on both drives.

There's some discussion in this thread. Seems like the consensus is that there is a small but noticeable difference.

 

I had RAID0 set up on my G50V and for me, the benefits are outweighed by the risks of data loss, especially if you back up your data on a regular basis.

While RAID0 does provide speedier HDD performance, you may or may not notice it on a daily basis. In benchmarks, the speed increase with RAID0 is about 10-20MB/s more than a non-RAID configuration, and since the HDD is often the bottleneck in a notebook's overall performance, every bit of HDD performance increase can help.

Here's some data that may help with your decision whether or not you should setup RAID0. Note the different HDD RPMs on each system, but it should give you an idea regarding performance.

G71V w/ 250GB 7200RPM non-RAID


G50V w/ 500GB (2x250GB) 5400RPM in RAID0

 

I have RAID0 running on my G50Vt right now and I did a few benchmarks before and after. It does not measurably decrease battery life. RAID0 makes no real difference when it comes to day-to-day operations, but there is a huge speed increase when dealing with large files (e.g. a Crysis level loaded in 20 secs vs 30 secs for a non-RAID setup). The big drawback to RAID0 is if things go wrong, you can lose all your data. Even many rescue tools do not recognize RAID0 properly, so it may even be difficult to recover data if Windows is so mangled that it requires a complete reinstall. Data loss can be minimized if you split the drive into two partitions, one for data and the other as a system drive. Still, there is the potential to lose some data (I had to play through 10 chapters of Dead Space again when I did something and broke Windows).

 

I had raid 0 on my G50V, I even did video work on it and thats one of the tasks that can see the hgihest real life gain from raid 0, but I didnt like the idea of both my drives in use all the time instead of just one, and the potential data loss.

So now on my W90 that also supports raid 0 and has 2 drives I am using an independent drive setup again.

I like to have the 2nd drive as a scratch drive to work on that is totally separate from the OS/Programs drive and more data safety.

 

You might get nearly as much performance improvement as RAID0 just from putting your games on the second drive anyway, just because they won't have to compete with the OS or background programs for disk usage.

 

That's what I've opted to do. My stock hard drive holds the OS, work programs, etcetera. My new drive has games and other media.

The only possible issue I might see--and it's not at all noticeably, in my opinion--is that saved games and settings might be saved to your default drive.

 

As long as you keep a good backup on an external or network drive then I don't see any problem with RAID 0, I had my Gateway 6860 in RAID 0, haven't even opened the G71 yet but I'll probably drop in a SSD once they get to a reasonable price

 

RAID 0 .... too bad u can't do raid 0 and then a raid 1 mirror ..lol ..

 

Thats actually called Raid 5, and the G50v can probably do it but it would need more hdd's

 

Ok ...thanks for pointing it out Vicious ..lol ~~~ and ...where is the modded inf ( Internet here in country is not really great ....so yeah ) is there a site thatt can point out all the differentce between raid 0 ,1 ,5 ,8 ,9 ...?

 

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

There is a mode called RAID 0+1. There's also one called RAID 10 (1+0). There's a difference between those two too.

RAID 5 is a completely different beast. It's striped (like RAID 0) but with Parity. Parity is NOT Mirrored. Mirrored is an exact copy... which, in practical terms means... you ALWAYS have an even number of hard drives (0+1 has a minimum of 4 drives). RAID 5 has a minimum of 3 drives. In RAID 0+1, you have a stripe and THEN mirror the WHOLE stripe. You can lose one or ALL the drives in one mirror and you're be fine (data is safe, just need to replace bad drives), but if you lose one in each side (one from the "primary" AND one from the "secondary"), the whole thing is gone, bye bye data. But in RAID 5, parity is PART OF the stripe. You're allowed to lose ONLY one drive. The loss of a second will destroy the data.

Another way to look at it... let's say you use 10 drives.

In RAID 0+1: you get stripe, but only the capacity of 5 drives. data safe up to 5 drive failures (assuming they're all part of the same mirror side).

In RAID 5: You also get stripe, but the capacity of 9 drives. data safe up to only 1 drive failure.

Read more here.

But yes, you can do RAID 5 in the G50Vt... gotta take out the optical drive, find a mounting bracket to put a 3rd hard drive in that slot... and of course, the right adapter too.​

Guess not (read post below)

I did RAID 0 in my Prostar 8814 (Sager 8890/Clevo D800p), which I bought in Sept '03... and recently suffered a failure in one disk... and there you go... no more data. Interesting enough, I could put up to four drives in there and actually do RAID 0+1 (there's two internal bays and two external bays).

 

In fact, it appears that you can't do RAID 5 in a G50VT.
I have 3 HDDs in mine, and I can only do RAID 0 or RAID 1, leaving the 3rd one non-RAIDed.

 

Where's your third? I've heard the express card slot and the empty pci-mini (which on some models has turbo memory or a radio tuner) floated as possibilities.

 

Never considered Raid 0....maybe when i get my second drive

 

I swapped out my optical drive for a HDD. And after further testing, RAID0 + non-RAID HDD does not boot properly, so right now I just have 3 non-RAIDed drives.

 

You can't make all 3 drives part of the RAID array??

 

Alright, time for me to be the newbie.

I know if you go RAID, you lose express gate (which could just be reinstalled if you un-RAID).

But, does it force you to completely wipe out the HDDs? by that, I mean that I don't want to permanently lose the hidden recovery partition (even though it can't be used in RAID, or can it?). Anyway, I was thinking of going RAID 0, but only if I can leave that hidden partition alone or if I can make a reliable back up of that image.

Last I checked, I know you could make a striped RAID of using without using the whole hdd (especially when using different size drives).

 

Not true. Express Gate does work with RAID0 if you have the latest version. Works fine on mine.

Changing over to RAID 0 will obliterate everything on your hard drives. It requires a complete reinstall of Windows. If you're smart you'll make regular backups after converting to RAID 0.

Use drives that are perfectly identical with RAID (make/model). You're just asking for trouble if you don't.

 

I don't use ExpressGate, so it really doesn't matter to me.

I will be using identical drives, since I'm using the two drives that my G50Vt-A2 came with. But I was hoping to combine the first hdd, less the space of the hidden recovery, with the same amount on the second drive. Which would then leave a similar amount of unpartitioned space on the second drive.

What you lose or don't lose should depend on how good the RAID controller is. A good one should allow you to specify the amount you want to use.

I'm going to give it a try when my 500 GB external comes, so I can dump all the data from my second drive (approximately 286 GB of stuff). Or as soon as I'm confident I've got what ever I want to keep on my 1 TB external (which is just about full).

 

1) Only 2 of my drives are same model; I dare not try to RAID the 3rd one
2) In the RAID boot-up settings, when you create a RAID partition, the instruction says "choose 2 drives to put in RAID", so I did not try to see if it's possible to select 3.

Also, I'm using BIOS 0209, and in BIOS 0213, is says that the "ODD is detectable in DOS", no idea if that'll fix anything.