Questin about x2 HDD?

[Jayvon]

Hello everyone, I was just curious to how having two harddrives better your performance?

If I were to get x2 WD raptors or Seagate Barracuda how will my machine run? Whats the real effects of it?

Will I be setting it in raid 1 or 0 and why?

This is what I am currently using...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152031

If I do upgrade to 16mb cache HDD's will I even notice a change or should I just keep the HDD I have now?

 

[King X13]

I dont understand why everyone wants RAID. You dont need raid just cuz you have 2 hard drives and there is no increase in proformace just because you have 2 hard drives.

Raids real purpose is to increase space in servers and to allow mirror back ups in those servers or for Grapics designers that need all there work backed up onto another hard drive. for a home pc its not logical expect for ppl to say hey i have raid.

you can have 2 hard drives just be 2 hard drives. one your c drive and one your d drive that you can put all your files on so if your windows crashes you dont looks your music and pics and stuff.

Keep your 250 gig drive unless you need more space.

 

[Nitestick]

I dont understand why everyone wants RAID. You dont need raid just cuz you have 2 hard drives and there is no increase in proformace just because you have 2 hard drives.

aside from the performance increase in read/write times gained in say a RAID 0 (not technically RAID) array or a RAID 5 array. true RAID's original purpose was for servers but that was mainly a constraint of cost. these days there is no reason why a home user shouldn't have their own small RAID array as long as they understand it.

 

[Jayvon]

I still dont get it...

 

[Nitestick]

simple.....it depends on the mode of RAID you choose though. now the buzzword at the moment is "RAID 0". that is probably what you are thinking of.

in theory the performance of a RAID 0 array multiplies with every disk added e.g. 2 disks=2x performance, 3 disks=3x performance etc etc. of course that is in theory but it does provide a definite improvement in read write times. RAID 0 (striping) splits data into chunks and spreads it across the disks in the "array", they act basically like one large hdd. the downside is that if one disk fails all data in the array is lost.

 

[King X13]

yeah but the whole point in raid is for back in the days when you have a five 14gig scsi drives because a 50gig scsi was like 500 bucks so you joined them to get all your space.

for someone to raid 2 500 gig drives or whatever on a home pc makes no sense.

your read a write times arent increased?? you cant raid something and have it act faster then the drive can be.

EDIT** even in a RAID 5 we have recoverd ALL data from a loss of 2 drives, brought the 2 drives back to life and all data was recovered so it can be done for up to 2 drives going down.

 

[jordo_99]

simply put. gamers and pc enthusiasts use Raid 0 to, like nitestick described, combine 2 HD's into one faster one. It just got a little bit of risk because of the crashing. But how often DOES a HD crash? never happened to me.

Raid 1 is just 2 HD's what mirror what's in the other so if one fails you still have the data.

gamers usually use Raid 0 for the purpose of getting the (rough) equivilant of double the RPM's cuz 10,000 and 15,000 RPM drives are more expensive and have less space than 2 regular 7200 HD's.

 

[DarkS1d3]

for someone to raid 2 500 gig drives or whatever on a home pc makes no sense.

your read a write times arent increased?? you cant raid something and have it act faster then the drive can be.

No, it makes perfect sense, I have two 320 gig HDD's in a RAID 0 array, and I can tell you that it's faster.

Read and Write times are increased becasuse you split the data in half, and send half of the total data to each drive, so each only has to write half, speeding up the process by 2x.

 

[jordo_99]

for someone to raid 2 500 gig drives or whatever on a home pc makes no sense.

your read a write times arent increased?? you cant raid something and have it act faster then the drive can be.

EDIT** even in a RAID 5 we have recoverd ALL data from a loss of 2 drives, brought the 2 drives back to life and all data was recovered so it can be done for up to 2 drives going down.

so are you talking about raid 1 (mirror raid) or raid 0 (speed raid)

because raid 0 definately increases speed. as well as raid 5 (combined 1 and 0) which you obviously know about due to your last comment.

for those of you looking for an analogy for raid 0 here it is:
raid 0 is like saying the alphabet in a way. if you have 1 person saying it then it'll take them a while. if you have 2 people saying every other letter...it'll take less time. simple as that. more and more HD's and it goes faster and faster for read/write time.

but if one person messes up and stops saying the alphabet (failed drive) then the whole alphabet is messed up (all files lost.)

anyways

 

[jordo_99]

note you also have to have identical HD's for raid or else it won't work because they'll operate at different speeds and screw it all up.

different brands might work w/ identical specs but i've never tried it. anybody know?