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    What is so great about RAID?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by NOSintake, Jun 25, 2006.

  1. NOSintake

    NOSintake Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    so ive heard people using the RAID 0 (?) option for their hard drivers, but i was wondering what is so great about it. are there any performance gains? do you somehow get more space?
     
    NOSintake, Jun 25, 2006
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  2. XantaxNZ

    XantaxNZ Notebook Guru

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    Raid setups are essentially an array of hdd's, and depending on the configuration do different things.

    Raid0 for example is a 'Striping' array. How it works is that you have two hdd's (When creating the array any difference in space between the two drives is truncated - Both drives are best being exactly the same) connected to the raid controller, and data is split between the two (Ie: 2x 200gb drives would result in a 400gb logical drive). For example, for a 10mb file, 5mb will be read/written to one physical drive, 5mb from the other to make the 10mb total.

    Benefits are that you get a theoretical increase of double the speed. However limitations of bus widths etc always lower this to ~20%, but since the hdd is always the bottleneck in most pc's, 20% faster hdd loading times is always better.

    Downside to Raid0 is that it is sometimes unstable, as errors in data sometimes occur, which causes a messup to occur.
     
    XantaxNZ, Jun 25, 2006
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  3. strikeback03

    strikeback03 Notebook Deity

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    Also, calling RAID 0 as RAID is somewhat incorrect, since there is no redundancy (which is the R in RAID). So any problems with either disk will destroy all the data, not just what is on one disk.
     
    strikeback03, Jun 25, 2006
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  4. NOSintake

    NOSintake Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    so you have to have 2 hard drivers with the same space to run RAID?
     
    NOSintake, Jun 25, 2006
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  5. kegobeer

    kegobeer 1 hr late but moving fast

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    kegobeer, Jun 25, 2006
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  6. Iter

    Iter Notebook Evangelist

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    yeah, min. requirement for RAID need 2 hard drives, then 4 or up depends on what RAID the machine need.
     
    Iter, Jun 25, 2006
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  7. xcoll2001

    xcoll2001 Notebook Enthusiast

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    A raid in simple terms is basically two hard drives acting as one. Meaning if you have two 80gb drives set as a raid the system will not see it as a 160gb but as one drive with the capacity of 80gb. They act as a clone to each other. Since you are utilizing two drives simultaneously you benefit from the speed boost which is quite apparent. Unless you are doing major video editing or securing a safe server network there is no point in setting up a raid.
     
    xcoll2001, Jun 25, 2006
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  8. strikeback03

    strikeback03 Notebook Deity

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    that is one type of RAID - RAID 1 or "mirroring".
     
    strikeback03, Jun 25, 2006
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