Boot off RAID 0 (stripe)?

reign

What is this storage?
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Jun 13, 2003
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I build a another PC. Is it recommended to boot of a RAID 0, stripping? Or should I just boot from a Primary master disk? BTW MB is a Abit KT7A-RAID & I planning on using WD Caviar SE 40GB hard drives. Yet, I'm also interested in the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 hard drives. Any & all opinions are welcomed. Thanks!
 

CougTek

Hairy Aussie
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Which 7200.7, the parallel or the SATA version? The serial one is much faster than the PATA. In term or responsiveness, the SATA 7200.7 and the WD400JB are about equal, while the PATA 7200.7 is clearly behind. However, the WD400JB comes with a 3 years warranty, while both Seagate drives feature a puny and laughable one scant year. This factor alone should turn you to the Western Digital.

RAID 0 will reduce your boot times, but that's about all it will improve. What it will decrease is the reliability of your storage system and the price per megabyte ratio. After the boot sequence is done, you won't feel any difference between a RAID 0 array and a single drive unless you do tasks requiring a lot of sequential data transfer (large images modifications, video editing, you get the idea).

IMO, you should stick to a single drive setup, unless you want RAID 0 on your system for (futile) bragging rights.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Brother, I urge you to avert your gaze from the Promise controller.

When you're bitten by the stone-throwing RAID0 black demon-infidel, it's best to ask if you really need RAID0. Most people don't.

If you're absolutely convinced you're one of those people, operating system files are something that are less problematic in the event that there's a problem with the array, and an area that can benefit from higher STR (faster program loads are good things).

Boot away.

That said, if you're planning to consort with the heathen non-fault-tolerant arrays, you should at least make sure you have an extra hard disk handy to hold all the user data you consider important, to enforce a rigorous backup schedule. Face east seven times weekly, and worship at the foot of data integrity.

He who prays not to the god of backups, and lays down with stripe sets, will surely face the cleansing scourge of lost files, broken arrays and corrupted data.

So it is written, that many are the disk drives that achieve greatness unto themselves. Forty virgins await the chaste hard disk, called 800JB, or 180GXP, or Raptor.

Assalaam alaykum
 

CougTek

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Please Merc, don't tell me you have chosen to drown your misery into alchool or other drugs. Or is it just the lack of sleep?

BTW, I agree with the content.
 

reign

What is this storage?
Joined
Jun 13, 2003
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I was talking about the 40GB Barracuda 7200.7 parallel. I want a quiet drive. Ya, I know WD 3 year warranty is the deciding factor!

The reason I'm build this, actually rebuilding, is because my KT7A-RAID MB running raid 0 w/ 2 IBM 75 GXP DTLA-307020, the string broke. It's boots from the RAID 0, flawlessly for the past 2.5 years. I guess I should feel lucky the "DEATHSTAR" didn't die earlier. Atleast the 75GXPs are still under warranty, although I hear their RMA dept. sucks.
 

blakerwry

Storage? I am Storage!
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reign said:
I was talking about the 40GB Barracuda 7200.7 parallel. I want a quiet drive. Ya, I know WD 3 year warranty is the deciding factor!

The reason I'm build this, actually rebuilding, is because my KT7A-RAID MB running raid 0 w/ 2 IBM 75 GXP DTLA-307020, the string broke. It's boots from the RAID 0, flawlessly for the past 2.5 years. I guess I should feel lucky the "DEATHSTAR" didn't die earlier. Atleast the 75GXPs are still under warranty, although I hear their RMA dept. sucks.


The RMA dept at both IBM and hitachi has been good to me, however I have never been a rude prick as it seems many people are to RMA reps.

Coug-
RAID 0 will reduce your boot times, but that's about all it will improve. What it will decrease is the reliability of your storage system and the price per megabyte ratio.

1) I've found that RAID increases your boot times because of the RAID controller BIOS initializing and finding drives. This ranges anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds for most PCs depending on controller and drive(s). My boot time on some PCs has been less than this amount of time.

2) How would it effect price per MB? you're doubling MB and doubling price. I assume what you mean is buying 2 40GB over a single 80GB drive.. however this rule may not always be valid as two 120GB drives could certainly be cheaper than a single 240GB drive.



Reign-

Just to reitterate the points of my fellow SF members, using two disk drives seperately is generally faster than using them in a RAID 0 array for desktop PC use.
 

Explorer

Learning Storage Performance
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As far as what's good these days: The IBM 180GXP is probably the best available hard drive for Parallel ATA RAID. Even though the Seagate drive is quieter, the Seagate PATA version of this drive is not such a great drive for building RAID volumes (the SATA Seagate models are good drives for RAID implemntation, though).

IBM's 180GXP is also pretty quiet compared to ANY of their previous ATA hard drives.
 
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