to RAID or not to RAID?

[cmm]

I am about to spec new workstations for myself and a coworker. Is it safe to say that the hard disk is the bottleneck when loading/saving large assemblies, and that RAID 0 would make loading/saving large assemblies significantly faster? The motherboard will have a built in RAID controller so I figured we might as well take advantage of it. I was thinking of getting two 36GB SATA 10kRPM 8MB cache WD Raptor drives in RAID 0 configuration. Any thoughts?

Chris Montgomery
Mechanical Engineer

http://www.adaptivequipment.com

 

[JNR]

I don't think you will see any difference in loading or saving with a RAID controller. Today's disks are not the bottleneck. But on the other hand it won't hurt either.

John Richards Sr. Mech. Engr.
Rockwell Collins Flight Dynamics

There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[MadMango]

Serial ATA (SATA) drives are all the rage today. They are easier to set-up and cheaper for the same (if not better) performance.

Of course I should have prefaced my comments with the following disclaimer: I don't use SATA and my Raid 0 was removed by my IT Department, and I am regurgitating several diffrent articles I have read on the subject.

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[cmm]

Why did they remove your Raid 0?

Chris Montgomery
Mechanical Engineer

http://www.adaptivequipment.com

 

[MadMango]

The Raid 0 I had was "striped" meaning that data was split between the 2 HDDs I had. Partial data went to one HDD, and partial data went to the other. Software would read both drives, recompile the data to restore its integrity.

The problem was that this was very unstable, and sometimes it failed to recompile my data, and I would get errors. The drivers were reinstalled twice by our IT Department, and then they just gave up on the whole issue. They are currently experimenting with “unstriped” SATA Raid 1 on a different machine. It’s only been running since Tuesday, but so far it looks good.

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[DrGonzo]

There are several RAID guides out on the net, here is a decent outline

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

You might want to think about data redundancy since a failure of one drive in RAID 0 would not be recoverable.

Dr. Gonzo