Raid 0 On A Laptop?

Ive read many times about how the HDD of a computer is quickly becoming the slowest part of every system. Everytime you buy a laptop, too, you need to worry about a 5400 rpm drive (which many laptops favor to stock) or a 7200 rpm drive.

Here is my question. Im not even sure if Raid 0 is able to be done on a laptop (which, im assuming it should be able to), but if it is, how much power would it eat up? Would it completely ruin my battery if i were to use it while travelling?

Secondly, if i were to decide to go with a RAID 0 formation on my laptop: I'm planning on buying a computer with a 500 GB 5400 rpm drive. I have no idea what drive is inside of it. It has a second slot available for another hard drive, so i have 2 options: Either just look inside when i get it, and order a second 5400 rpm drive of the exact type, or just buy 2x 7200 rpm drives online (that are decent quality) and use those, and just replace the one thats in it.

Which is smarter? What are my options? HELP ME!!!

(Just as a side note, im not trying to spark another huge thread on 5400 rpm drives vs. 7200 rpm drives. Ive read benchmarks and what not, im just scared about the chance that i have a ty drive inside when i get it.)

Thanks in advance!

 

What is the model of the laptop that you are thinking of RAIDing?
Not that many laptops are able to hold 2 hard drives.

 

If you have 2 HDD slots, it would be better to get a small SSD for your OS and programs and use the HDD for storage.

 

appreciate the quick responses. However, if at all avoidable, id rather not pay for a SSD (i plan to install a lot of games and programs, a TON even, and i want overall performance to be high, over a large amount of HD).

Is raid doable on a laptop? and, is it worth it if its just 2 unspecified 5400 drives (but are the same)?

Also: Im possitive the laptop has 2 HDD slots.

 

It depends on your chipset. Software RAID isn't all that great IMO since it doesn't have a dedicated chip to calculate parity, so it uses CPU cycles. The Intel 80GB Gen 2 drive is around $220, with Vista and all my programs, I can fit it into a 20GB drive. Is 60GB not enough for games? $220 isn't unreasonable as it would give you the best performance and still 500GB that you have for data. You would probably spend the same amount if you went and got two 500GB 7200RPM drives and put that in RAID and while there is more storage the performance is significantly less.

 

well, i mean, one game nowadays is 10gb +, and vista for me is minimal 35+. So it would be constricting, no?

Although SSDs seem to be the best option, a 128gb for at least 200-250$ is just too much to spend for me, whereas 2 7400 rpm drives i could get for 140.

 

If you have Intel chipset, just download the Matrix RAID drivers and you can software RAID. As I said above, I'm not so sure you'd see much of a difference since access times are the same (maybe worse) and CPU cycles will be used, but transfer rates will have increased. Since you already have a 500GB 5400RPM drive, maybe just get one more of those? It would be cheaper and the performance difference compared to 7200RPM drives isn't much (if even noticeable at all).

 

Dang, SSD's are hella expensive. I wouldn't mind paying that much if they were bigger, but they are just too small.

 

Well aside from price, everything about (good) SSDs is better than HDDs. Solid state means no moving parts, less weight, power consumed, heat, noise, more reliability, shock tolerance. While HDDs are hitting ceilings in terms of data density, the only thing holding back massive TB SSDs in 2.5" form factor is price as mentioned initially.

 

Hi there

I not sure there many laptops that can do raid o, the chipset and bios needs to support the feature, although a comon feature in desktop, I dont recall raid compatible laptop and if there is one, it will probably make SSD look cheap

On board graphic chipset are quite slow for games, the faster ones use discrete gpu cards, choose carefully


Good luck

Joe Rubido
I

 

Thank you for the responses. I was hoping to have a raid configuration to speed up my hard drive, but if it doesnt have raid configured in on the bios and chipset, then its not worth doing. I understand that much.

Lets just pray i dont have to go with the SSD configuration, because its SOOO expensive!

Thanks for all the advice.

 

Pretty sure every Sager/Clevo that supports multiple internal HDDs supports RAID... and aside from the fact they are high end systems to start with, they aren't particularly expensive.... Really, the limiting factor is that few lappies have more than one internal HDD bay. Not much point in supporting RAID if you only have space for one HDD anyway.

 

usually if you have 2 HD slots your BIOS supports RAID

you don't need to match HD's

you can use a 5400 with a 7200 or a SSD with a 5400 the fastest hard drive will mirror the slowest one ...

 

There is no point in RAID w/ SSD and HDD. Just use it as is...

 

David noticed here that heat might not always decrease.

I don't know if the SSD being tested would be considered a "good" SSD, but just so you know.

 

Unless you have a hardware RAID card, RAID on a laptop is pretty much useless. It offers practically no performance increase over a single drive

K-TRON

 

Dave tested one with Jmicron (Solidata K series I believe), which some were known to consume more power than HDDs.

 

Be careful with RAID 0 - it generally does not provide performance increases in everyday applications; it will shine in video editing and other isolated uses but is not worth the risk. The risk of data loss with RAID 0 is doubled since you are dependent on two drives; if one of them fails, everything is gone.

I suggest either doing RAID 1 (mirrored drives) or going with two single drives.

 

Or RAID5... but then you need 3 drives.

 

well, im planning on running my systems like this: I have a PC with all my backups. All my file backups are on a 1.5 terrabyte external and 1 terabyte internal drive. So, i was thinking, if i run raid 0 on my laptop, im basically avoiding ll the risk as it is. To me, itsnot annoying to have to reinstall everything when the time comes. If a drive breaks and im not in raid, im losing 50% of my information anyways. Chances are, i either lose my OS and programs, or i lose all my files. Either way im pissed. But i havent had a hard drive fail on me yet with everything i do with them, so i guess ill pray my best.

The raid function in a laptop isnt a make or break decision for me, i was just wondering if its possible. I do a lot of gaming etc, and it would increase my hard drive read/write by 75% or so. So, i thought, instead of screwing with my main computer , i could do a little experimenting on my laptop

Thanks for all the responses. Does anyone know why a virtual raid (without hardware) isnt worth the time? Supposedly it uses a lot of processor, but i was wondering if someone could give me a crash course (of why its not worth doing).

 

Software raid 0 would have a negligable CPU overhead.

 

I agree for RAID0. There's no parity to caculate thus virtually no CPU overhead. Nowadays, processors are very fast, thus it'll maybe require 0.5% of cpu power at the most to operate RAID volumes.

 

So, RAID 0, even if used through software, is still worth doing?

 

So no more overhead for software RAID and no real performance gain anyways... pretty pointless then.

 

Well, in theory, in RAID 0 you'll get about twice the performance of a single HD when reading or writing data since you're pulling data off both drives simultaneously, which means you get double the data in the same timeframe. It won't be as fast as a SSD/HD combo, sure, but it's cheaper. Don't forget that the original acronym for RAID was Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

 

I use a lot of programs, so i dont think i can buy a SSD for less than 250$. Although that might be a future thing to decide, for now i think a raid 0 array would be best. After looking, my computer does allow 2 hard drives, but before its arrival (2 weeks) i wont see if the bios allows raid. So, that will be the day to see

I wonder how long it will be until SSDs go down in price and up in volume. Revolutionary idea there. Im still happy though, that raid exists. Its just nuts that its doable on a laptop!!

Edit:

 

If any laptop has RAID, it is probably because it uses Intel's RAID technology. With Intel Matrix RAID, the processor does do the work if there is any to be done. In theory, yes RAID0 can double bandwidth...but in practice it rarely happens.

That being said, RAID1 and 5 are probably the most useful of the bunch. RAID1 ensures a computer doesn't crash and you have time to protect your data, RAID5 does the same but trades off processing performance for storage efficiency.

But RAID is not a backup solution.