Hard Drives, the more the merrier + RAID question.

2006-11-02 01:44:56

#1

the_outsider38: Microsoft Poster Child; +83|7146|Vancouver BC Canada

Recently purchased 2 Segate 320Gb 16Mb 7200RPM SATA2 Barracudas to add to my 2 Maxtor 160Gb 16Mb 7200RPM PATA drives. Im running them all individually as of now so I have 4 HDDs. I love being able to have multipul copies of windows on it and being able to format any drive I chose, with some shuffeling. Plus I can transfer files in the background because it doesn't interfear with windows except when your reading/writing from the OS drive.

One question though.

Can I do a RAID 0 with the SATA2s and then break that RAID array into 2 partitions? I don't really have a need for a 640Gb drive but 2 smaller 320Gb RAID drives would be nice.

Just cleaning up now...Guess who has 66Gb of installed games.....I should probably clean that out more often...

Last edited by the_outsider38 (2006-11-02 01:57:00)

2006-11-02 02:09:22

#2

max: Vela Incident; +1,652|7019|NYC / Hamburg

sure it is. you can do everything to a raid array that you can do to a single hd. on some intel boards its even possible to make a raid 0 and a raid 1 on only 2 drives
i.e
drive 1 part 1 + drive 2 part 1 in a raid 0
drive 1 part 2 + drive 2 part 2 in a raid 1

_{once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404.}

2006-11-02 02:10:21

#3

RavyGravy: Son.; +617|6858|NSW, Australia

wow thats a lot of big words

2006-11-02 02:19:02

#4

kylef: Gone; +1,352|6945|N. Ireland

If you RAID 0'ed your Seagates and then partitioned them you'd just be back with 2 320s which is what you had before//

2006-11-02 02:21:41

#5

the_outsider38: Microsoft Poster Child; +83|7146|Vancouver BC Canada

yes but RAID 0 is faster then 2 seperate drives.

2006-11-02 02:48:49

#6

FathomsDown: Member; +19|7103|England

the_outsider38 wrote:
yes but RAID 0 is faster then 2 seperate drives.

No, only its its interleaved. RAID 0 is an odd specification that it allows two drived to be added together to create one large logical disk without any redundancy so RAID 0 can either be striping (faster than a single drive) or concatinated (the same speed).

Be careful if you are talking about RAID 0 as some contollers only support concatination.

2006-11-02 02:54:31

#7

the_outsider38: Microsoft Poster Child; +83|7146|Vancouver BC Canada

Mine supports striping, but thanks for the concern. All I really needed to know was could I split it from there.

Last edited by the_outsider38 (2006-11-02 02:54:57)

2006-11-02 02:55:35

#8

kylef: Gone; +1,352|6945|N. Ireland

RAID 0 is faster than 2 separate drivers FathomsDown.. It is stripped across 2 drives so if you made a text file, half would go on one drive and the other half on the other.. The threat is that if one drive fails, you'll never get any of your data back on either hard drive.

2006-11-02 03:02:19

#9

FathomsDown: Member; +19|7103|England

leetkyle wrote:
RAID 0 is faster than 2 separate drivers FathomsDown.. It is stripped across 2 drives so if you made a text file, half would go on one drive and the other half on the other.. The threat is that if one drive fails, you'll never get any of your data back on either hard drive.

No, as I said, only if it is set up as a stripe. RAID 0 can also be set up as a concat group which is no faster as data is only written to the second drive once the first drive is full. Its a very common misconception that RAID 0 = stripe.

2006-11-02 03:05:03

#10

the_outsider38: Microsoft Poster Child; +83|7146|Vancouver BC Canada

Either way, most RAID 0 are set to stripe, especially when the Mobo advertises it. Thx for the reminder though. Good to know.

2006-11-02 17:01:10

#11

Mad Ad: Member; +178|6963|England, UK

concatenation is JBOD and not raid 0 in the traditional sense. Either way yes you can format a stripe or mirror set as much as you like...to the mobo anything the other side of the raid controller looks like a single big disk and if you want 2, 4 or even 10 partitions on it then thats ok, each one will be given a new drive letter in your my computer and you can write to it or network map it like any other drive.

2006-11-02 17:48:01

#12

Kmar: Truth is my Bitch; +5,695|7053|132 and Bush

Mad Ad wrote:
concatenation is JBOD and not raid 0 in the traditional sense. Either way yes you can format a stripe or mirror set as much as you like...to the mobo anything the other side of the raid controller looks like a single big disk .

Exactly and what you do after is up to you .
Raid 0 gave me a huge jump.

https://tampastorm.smugmug.com/photos/101706055-L.jpg

Xbone Stormsurgezz

2006-11-03 01:23:06

#13

the_outsider38: Microsoft Poster Child; +83|7146|Vancouver BC Canada

After a fun filled day of fiddeling with nVidia SATA RAID, and then trying to remove my PATA drives I discovered that it was only going to run if I left them in, plus it gave me my SATA array as H and I, not the C and D I had wanted. It did let me partition them though.

Long story short, I said screw the Nvidia RAID and used the Silicon Image SATA RAID on my board and it did exactly what I wanted. Then I was able to reinstall my PATA drives and they showed up as E and F. Perfect!!!
Now I cna plug and unplug the PATAs as I want.

And of course, the results....

Old Drives

https://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d126/The_Outsider38/My%20Computer/MaxtorHDDTach.jpg

New Drives in RAID 0

https://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d126/The_Outsider38/My%20Computer/SiliconImageHDDTach.jpg

The new ones don't burst well, but have double the read speed and less seek time, even though they are 4 times the size of the Maxtor. Neither could push the CPU past 0%.

What do you think of my results? I'm not really a HDD expert.

P.S. Big Thx to everyone for the info.

P.P.S. I can't format my old C drive fully....Says its a "System disk" It only has 270Mb of stuff on it apparently, but has no files in it, I checked for hidden ones too. I'd really just like to wipe it.

Last edited by the_outsider38 (2006-11-03 01:28:39)

2006-11-03 06:52:58

#14

Defiance: Member; +438|7123

Eh, raid... Yes to most it makes a difference but in game load tests it's shown to be negligible. If it's worth it to you, fine, but I'm not going to drop more money on something that doesn't help me much outside of benchmarks.

2006-11-03 07:27:52

#15

heggs: Spamalamadingdong; +581|6840|New York

actually, raid0 is def worth it. i have two 80 gig drives in raid0, athlon 64 3200+, and 2 gigs on ram. it isn't a terribly fast system, but i can have it boot up to desktop in about 20-30 seconds, and be on a loaded up map in 1.5 mins from hitting the power button. it doesn't increase the response time, this is true. but your bandwidth becomes huge. if you really want some crazy performance, try hooking up two 10000 rpm drives. fast response time with huge bandwidth = wonderfulnessness

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2006-11-03 07:48:03

#16

Des.Kmal: Member; +917|7070|Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Go SCSI. 15k rpm son.

Add me on Origin for Battlefield 4 fun: DesKmal

2006-11-03 07:50:52

#17

Kmar: Truth is my Bitch; +5,695|7053|132 and Bush

Nice job, you will be loving that raid 0. BTW I'm loving my nvidia Raid. I'm at about 125. (I am running raptors though.)

Last edited by Kmarion (2006-11-03 07:52:55)

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BF2S Forums Hard Drives, the more the merrier + RAID question.

the_outsider38 wrote:

leetkyle wrote:

Mad Ad wrote:

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