RAID Question

[Indybird]

Say I install two identical hard drives and I want to put them in a RAID setup. Which setup increases the performance the most? Secondly, is there any RAID setup that involves two identical drives being recognized as one larger drive?

Thanks,
Indybird

[.Maleficus.]

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12513

[Indybird]

Well, that answers my first, but not my second. Thanks though. +rep

-Indybird

[jdbnsn]

I think that site answers you second question too, I haven't looked at it in a while but I'm pretty sure they describe every RAID config, what it does, and how it works. But I couldn't personally answer your question, I'm a RAID noob.

I'm going to move this thread down to the hard drive section, it seems more suited there.

[chaksq]

is there any RAID setup that involves two identical drives being recognized as one larger drive?

Thanks,
IndybirdActually there are types of RAID that involve 2 or more drives being grouped together and recognized as one. This is RAID 0 which actually was explained on that linked site, just kinda not directly. This I believe is one of the most common RAID setups for home users, although if you lose one of the drives all your data is gone.

[Indybird]

I think that site answers you second question too, I haven't looked at it in a while but I'm pretty sure they describe every RAID config, what it does, and how it works. But I couldn't personally answer your question, I'm a RAID noob.

I'm going to move this thread down to the hard drive section, it seems more suited there.
Thanks but I can't find it.


Actually there are types of RAID that involve 2 or more drives being grouped together and recognized as one. This is RAID 0 which actually was explained on that linked site, just kinda not directly. This I believe is one of the most common RAID setups for home users, although if you lose one of the drives all your data is gone.

Alright, but say I RAID 0 two 160GB drives, does it show up as ~320GB?

By the way I don't really care about the info on my main HDD because I only install games and programs. I keep all of my music, pictures and other important files on an external HDD. In a worst case scenario I'll lose my program settings and some not-yet-backed-up game saves, which doesn't worry me too much.

Thanks,
Indybird

[chaksq]

Well I don't claim to be a RAID expert in fact I don't know too much about it other than basics. I believe I believe what you want to do is what's referred to as RAID striping. I'm not sure if both 160GB drives combined will be completely 320GB, might be a little less but definitely more than just one drive. Like I said I'm not fully sure of how it works other than something about splitting stored data between both drives, which makes accessing it faster, also combines the storage space of the two drives.

[si-skyline]

Well as the other guys said, striping is the speed performance from RAID. but for your second question if its not relayed on in your first question then JBOD (Just a bunch of disks)

would work too.. as you guessed its in the name. but there is no performace incress from just having one drive and the sorta better thing with this then stripping is that if one of the drives fails you only lose a portion of the total data depending were it is.

the only advantage of this as you asked is to make 2 or more hard drives a single volume..

hope that helped :)

[J-Roc]

Raid 0 is what you want. I have 2 500Gb drives, in raid 0 i see one disk with a capacity of 1Tb. You still get the total volume of both drives and increased performance for reads and writes. However, as mentioned, if one drive goes, all data is gone.

Raid 1 is mirrored where 2 500Gb drives will show as 1 500Gb drive. The same data is stored on both disks making it fault tolerant. You will see a performance increase while reading from the drive as it can look up multiple files at once. Writing to the drive takes the same time as writing to a single disk.

[OvRiDe]

This was a really good thread about RAID we had here on TBCS..

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7783

If performance is what you are after and you are not worried about redundancy or the information.. RAID 0 is what you want!

[Indybird]

This was a really good thread about RAID we had here on TBCS..

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7783

If performance is what you are after and you are not worried about redundancy or the information.. RAID 0 is what you want!

Thanks and I'm sure you guys have answered this like 3 or 4 times, but in RAID 0 would two 160GB act as app. 320GB?

Thank you,
Indybird

[J-Roc]

yes