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    Raid 0? Hmm...

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Kingslugger14206, Nov 3, 2008.

  1. Kingslugger14206

    Kingslugger14206 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Something I've never done is setup my hard drives either on my notebook or my desktop on Raid 0. I've seen people discuss the method but don't really understand what it is.

    Can someone explain what benefits you receive from setting your hard drives into raid 0 mode will provide and how you do it exactly(think it's in the motherboards bios, no?)? Is there a guide on how to do it and what benefits or consequences can a rise from it as well?

    Thanks guys.
     
    Kingslugger14206, Nov 3, 2008
    #1
  2. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    Basically you get the bandwidth of two drives available at the same time. Two drives are seen as one and are written to at the same time. ie two 160gb hard drives into one 320gb drive
    Quirks: If one drive dies, all your data is gone.
    Uses: Higher performance (faster loading times).
    Also, I've heard it is better to have identical drives.

    Quote wikipedia: "Striped set without parity" or "Striping". Provides improved performance and additional storage but no fault tolerance. Any disk failure destroys the array, which becomes more likely with more disks in the array. A single disk failure destroys the entire array because when data is written to a RAID 0 drive, the data is broken into fragments. The number of fragments is dictated by the number of disks in the array. The fragments are written to their respective disks simultaneously on the same sector. This allows smaller sections of the entire chunk of data to be read off the drive in parallel, giving this type of arrangement huge bandwidth. RAID 0 does not implement error checking so any error is unrecoverable. More disks in the array means higher bandwidth, but greater risk of data loss.

    Err, I've never actually tried RAIDing drives together.. so yeah..
     
    namaiki, Nov 3, 2008
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  3. NAS Ghost

    NAS Ghost Notebook Deity

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    NAS Ghost, Nov 3, 2008
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  4. powerpack

    powerpack Notebook Prophet

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    "Real" RAID (not software) needs hardware RAID controller.

    I would ask why you are considering RAID 0? It does serve a purpose but for most certainly a minimal real world computing difference while doubling the chance you will suffer HDD failure resulting in catastrophic loss.
     
    powerpack, Nov 3, 2008
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  5. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    software raid 0 is about 5-7% efficient at best in real time performance.
    Hardware raid 0 is about 60-80% efficient in real life performance (performance gain is based on hardware raid chipsets and manufacturers)

    In laptops, its really not worth it, cause raid 0 may increase the scoree your harddrive gets in synthetic programs like hdtune, but it increases seek times, and is horrible inefficient.
    The only raid worthy of using on a laptop is raid 1, so you can have a backup of everything. So in case something fails you are good to go.

    If one drive fails in raid 0, all of your data is lost. So that means you dont just go to jail, and collect $200 after one round. It means your out of the game, and you have to sit on the sidelines while reinstalling your operating system.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Nov 4, 2008
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  6. nizzy1115

    nizzy1115 Notebook Prophet

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    The most important thing you need is a laptop that can hold 2 hard drives. Then get 2 identical hard drives put into your laptop. Once thats done then its just setting it up and installing windows...but for most people they wont get this far because most laptops can only have 1 hard drive.
     
    nizzy1115, Nov 4, 2008
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