Anyone with raid experience

Dave · 04-28-2001, 21:24 | posts: 8,447 | Location: Lost in boxes

I wanna know if I can do this. 
With the mobo listed below and the maxtor hd, I want to add a 30-40 gig deskstar. I don't want to raid the ata 100 and ata 66. 
I want to give each drive a partition of about 4-5 gig. the deskstar would house the windows ME os and anything else microshaft insists on having there. The similar partition on the maxtor I would want to mirror as a back up. The remainder of the maxtor would be a burn drive, maybe with some multimedia soteage. The remainder of the deskstar would be for games, programs etc. 
Can this be done? 
If so can a partition be hidden? Say I bought the 40 gig, told the gf it was a 30 gig partitioned and hid the extra ten, with incriminating file housed there. <IMG SRC="smileys/evil.gif">

Aris · 04-28-2001, 23:48 | posts: 607

From my limited RAID knowledge I think that the HDDs must be the same (model & Gbytes). Otherwise RAID is not possible...

Fershlugg · 04-29-2001, 00:50 | posts: 544 | Location: @thebar.drunk or Torrington, CT

You can RAID any two drives, but you will be limited by the size and speed of the smaller/slower one.... So if you RAID a 40G ATA100 and a 30G ATA66 you will essentially have 2 30G ATA66s. 
 
You also cannot just RAID part of a drive. For a mirror I would instead just do a daily or weekly or just before a new installation Ghost of the C: drive. 
 
You can hide a partition. I would probably use Partition Magic to do so..... But of course the partition wouldn't even be available to you until you unhid it.

Dave · 04-29-2001, 00:53 | posts: 8,447 | Location: Lost in boxes

not the answer I wanted. but you did answer the question. Thanks.

Aris · 04-29-2001, 01:29 | posts: 607

Well Fershlugg, I didn't know that... 
 
Bugsy if you are going to use Partition Magic on a disk that has data (that you need) on it then take a backup first, PM doesn't work corectly always... 
 
BTW this isn't the correct section for this post <IMG SRC="smileys/biggrin.gif">

05-01-2001, 12:00 | posts: n/a

dude, i've got a promise ultra 66 - hacked to a fasttrak and i've got 2x9.1gb quantums.. All i can do is partition the raid.. i.e. i can have multiple partitions on the raid array (I don't tho i just use a secondary HDD for system files) also make sure you set ya block size to around 256kb's It's a bit quicker I find... But the best way to figure that out is to somehow do a report on your HDD and get an average file size and then select the block size equal to or just over that size... 
 
Hope I ain't rambling again <IMG SRC="smileys/smile.gif">

06-21-2001, 04:03 | posts: n/a

I have a Abit KT7A Raid MB. 
What you are looking to do is simmiler to what I am running . 
I have 2 30gig Maxtor 100 UDMA's set up in Raid and ahve Windows and all related files installed there . I also have installed all game files there for use of the Extra speed the Raid offers. 
I then installed a 30gig Maxter on a eprate chanel I install'd ONLY my Muliti media < MPEG, MP3's ect along with the Programs needed . 
I only down load to this drive whitch is partitioned into 2 15 gig units . 
I like this becae I due frequent REINSTALLS ( not all of my own choise) and I am able to simply remove the drive and when every thing is reinstalled just hook it back up. 
I have even disconected and taken it to a friendshouse for VERY MUCH EASYER transfer of files .

06-21-2001, 20:16 | posts: n/a

I don't think RAID is really a priority piece of hardware. Some thorough benchmark testing showed that in Winstone you got around 10% improvement. In every other test you actually some some decrease, but the reviewers didn't even mention what the significance of those benchmarks were and only mentioned the significance of the one in which RAID came out on top, maybe because all the other ones were not important...but then why do it in the first place? 
 
Anyway, it's the cost that's no fun. First you have to spend twice as much money on the harddrive stuff, then you have to buy a RAID controller, and then if one drive fails you are screwed (0). Does it have any impact on game performance? I thought games only refer to hard disk for swapping when you're too low on RAM and that's not a good idea. I do know that it makes pretty much no difference from UDMA66 to UDMA100 for gaming, at least according to other benchmarks. Isn't RAID mostly useful for file transferring, which is just about moving files around and video editing? I just think that if you're dishing out twice the cash, and theoretically striping gives you twice the speed, you should at least GET 50% increase, not a measly 10% or whatever.

Ant · 06-22-2001, 03:58 | posts: 6,845 | Location: UK

I assume everyone is revering to raid wrt disk striping as... 
 
Disk striping increases system performance, the only reason you would not notice a speed increase is if you had a really cack drive that you used to disk strip. 
 
Disk mirroring is again raid, but its used for stability and does slow down your sys. 
 
Learn more @ <A HREF="http://www.systemlogic.net/articles/01/1/raid/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.systemlogic.net/articles/01/1/raid/</A>

06-22-2001, 10:33 | posts: n/a

That analysis of RAID provides nothing factual showing any system gains in performance. There are at least a couple places with some actually in-depth analysis (that place certainly isn't one of them); at least one provided benchmarks. 
 
I don't see how spending another 40 bucks for a RAID controller (compare MSI K7 PRO 266 vs "R" version) at the least, along with double the price for an additional harddrive, yielding maximum 10% gain, is worth anything at all. Let's not forget that if one drive is bust, both drives are bust. And then there's the whole deal with striping sizes-that is a pain in the ass. I'd rather invest that $160 dollars in a higher quality CPU or towards a better video card than throw it away on a very mild gain in opening folders in IE. 
 
Maybe I'm missing something here, but again I don't see the usefulness.

Ant · 06-23-2001, 02:36 | posts: 6,845 | Location: UK

Yeah, that article was to inform about the advantages and different types of raid, not to provide test results and benchmarks. (sorry if thats what you wanted) 
 
I agree Marxist, that extra cash could be spent on something else, but raid isn't really aimed at home users so much, as the article hinted at. 
Servers and hosts should, in my opinion, always use Raid 1 or 5. Purely because it provides a significant advantage if their is a hardware fault, and therefore decreases the chance of a system taking a network/service down with it. 
Disk striping provides an increase in performance but I personally woundn't bother if it was a stand alone or just a client. I would bother if I had a fast spare HD around, and the cash to get a raid controller.

06-25-2001, 08:29 | posts: n/a

My sentiments exactly comrade.

pitydafoo · 06-25-2001, 23:42 | posts: 2,142 | Location: Tennessee, USA

I'm surprised at this (claims of only a 10% speed gain). Sandra indicates closer to a 100% gain in speed using striping (RAID 0) on a Highpoint 370 ATA/100 RAID controller. Now, it is certainly true that it shouldn't really help you in games or anything (except the initial load time into RAM), but anything that hits the hard drive should see a large gain in speed. Is it worth it? In my opinion, yes. You don't lose any capacity if you get two of the same size drive. Of course it does limit your choices a bit more, and you can usually get one big drive cheaper than two small ones. However these tradeoffs do not seem to be so extreme in my opinion. Of course, your mileage may vary <IMG SRC="smileys/smile.gif"> .

06-28-2001, 06:02 | posts: n/a

Well, that is a synthetic benchmark. The things these guys used actually ran real tests. And like I said, the problem is if one HD dies, both are dead. Besides the other problem is striping rates differ for various apps so sometimes it can run even slow than non-RAID in some instances. Besides, unless you are doing video editing or huge data transfers from one area to another on your hard disks for some reason why would you use it? I don't know about you but when I press "C:" on my 5400 RPM drive, running at UATA66, it pops up instantaneously. Every folder I click opens the minute I click it. So I don't understand what this litle performance boost does at all. UATA 100 makes sense because it's logical now that every drive and mobo is at 7200 rpm and ata class 5.

pitydafoo · 06-28-2001, 17:56 | posts: 2,142 | Location: Tennessee, USA

If a single hard drive dies, you're down. If you're worried about that, then you can run RAID 1 (mirroring), and not lose much performance vs. a single drive. Opening folders/drives shouldn't be taxing any drive. However RAID 0 would allow you to startup, defrag, copy files, shutdown, and start applications faster. It will also run faster on any application that hits the hard drive (video/image editing especially). I don't really think it is overly necessary for everyone, but it is certainly not bad. The applications don't handle the striping, they just see it as one drive. The RAID controller handles the striping, and thus, you really should not have any instances where RAID 0 is slower than a single drive (drives being equal of course) unless something was done wrong or the RAID controller was crappy.