| Author | Messages | |
outlawaol
Posts:362
 | | 09/26/2007 11:35 PM |
 Alert | Ok, so after much thinking. And getting some extra cash, I've decided to go with a RAID setup. This would effectivly cause me to reload Vista. But not a big deal really, I havnt fully intergrated my own personal settings yet.
Now the hard part, which RAID? I'd love to do RAID 0+1, but I cant afford 4+ drives for one redundent backup. More then likely will run RAID 0.
Thoughts, suggestions, a twenty from all the ~wOw~ members?
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| Rooster
Posts:546
| | 09/27/2007 1:10 AM |
Alert | Here's my $.20 worth of commentary (sorry about the decimal misplacement)
I'm all about thrift. I'm all about most bang for the buck. Thus, I'm all about RAID 0. To be honest with you, if I hooked up 4 drives in a RAID array, it would STILL be RAID 0, just with 4 drives (which by the way, theoritically would be twice as fast as a 2 drive setup, yet real-world results prove it to be almost indifferent). If you do not believe backups of any type (BTW Vista has a rocking HDD backup utility built-in) than the computer guy in me urges you to do the RAID 0+1, because no one likes losing everything. But the gamer and thrifty dude in me says, backup to DVD, either via Vista's imagine backup, or simply any files you wish to preserve. If ya wanna go all out, buy a third, dedicated "clone" drive for said images (will save on DVD's).
That said, going RAID 0, to be smoking hot, you still need to spend. You're gonna spend more on 2 drives than you would on 4 when you buy Raptors, for instance. But there is plenty of real-world proof (right in these forums, look at Teek's HDD speeds for instance) that your system will SCREAM when done right. I didn't (those particular Raptors weren't out when I built my system, but Raptors even then were still faster then the rest), and while I am still pretty much happy with my system, dated as it's becoming, I sit on the fence about my HDD speed. Yeah, faster than than those with non RAID systems.. But would have been SOOO much faster had I gone Rapterage. That's my $.20!
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| outlawaol
Posts:362
| | 09/27/2007 2:31 AM |
Alert | Thanks for the $.20 *pockets it*
:D
Yea, I am basicly going another 250gb 7200rpm, the same one from my computer build thread. Going to run those in 0.
And yea, I had a bad habit on the old system. I kept everything on the HDD's, I never had a good backup ritual I would run. More or less it would be large data chunks, TV shows and the like. I wish I had a toy, like a rimage, to auto load a burner and such. But alas those are more costly then just doing it the manual way.
The only valulable data, to me, is my pictures really. Im basicly going to get into a habit of backing up on the frequent. Keeping a good index is what it really boils down to. I like the way that Vista handles pictures, but I am shooting in RAW now, and Vista dosnt see those files as pictures, just unknown files. Guess its time to find a utility that intergrates into vista that will show/decode on the fly in vista.
:) | | | |
| tekel
Posts:321
| | 09/27/2007 2:41 AM |
Alert | | I don't really know that I would mess with RAID on anything but SCSI or Raptors. I havent tried it on the newish 3.0 SATA 7200rpm drives, but I don't know that your going to get that "Oh my goodness!" feeling from RAIDing standard drives. And backups are for sissies. Take that data loss like a man! | |
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| Rooster
Posts:546
| | 09/27/2007 3:18 AM |
Alert | Posted By outlawaol on 09/27/2007 2:31 AM
The only valulable data, to me, is my pictures really. Im basicly going to get into a habit of backing up on the frequent. Keeping a good index is what it really boils down to. I like the way that Vista handles pictures, but I am shooting in RAW now, and Vista dosnt see those files as pictures, just unknown files. Guess its time to find a utility that intergrates into vista that will show/decode on the fly in vista.
:)
Nikon digital cam by chance? I have a D-70S.. I use RAW on some things (special family event, etc), but not always.. There is a utility, either was on the disc, or a download (if you have a Nikon or not, you should still be able to use the download) of a, for lack of better word, driver or codec for the RAW format to allow windows to manipulate it as any other pic.. Of course, you'll still need an editing app (if ya don't have one?) that will support it, but at least the thumbnails and such will function.
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| outlawaol
Posts:362
| | 09/28/2007 12:29 AM |
Alert | Posted By tekel on 09/27/2007 2:41 AM
I
don't really know that I would mess with RAID on anything but SCSI or
Raptors. I havent tried it on the newish 3.0 SATA 7200rpm drives, but I
don't know that your going to get that "Oh my goodness!" feeling from
RAIDing standard drives. And backups are for sissies. Take that data
loss like a man! Really? Hmm.. interesting. If I even get a bit more performance then now, it will be better then nothing. And since I am not going to run these in 1 or anything, I will be gaining more space too. So, if it seems not any better, it'll at least be more storage. I've been lucky too, I've never had a data loss on my computers. My folks first computer died, but that was in the days of 8gb loud annoying drives. Sissie? Well, I've been called worse! Haha! :D Posted By Rooster on 09/27/2007 3:18 AM Posted By outlawaol on 09/27/2007 2:31 AM
The only valulable data, to me, is my pictures really. Im basicly going to get into a habit of backing up on the frequent. Keeping a good index is what it really boils down to. I like the way that Vista handles pictures, but I am shooting in RAW now, and Vista dosnt see those files as pictures, just unknown files. Guess its time to find a utility that intergrates into vista that will show/decode on the fly in vista.
:)[/quote]
Nikon digital cam by chance? I have a D
Nope, Im shooting with a Canon, the Rebel XT to be specific. I'll have to look up the RAW thing. The canon software that came with the camera does display the images in the program. At this point I am basicly adjusting, and saving in either jpeg or tiff format. :) | | | |
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monte1541
Posts:143
| | 09/28/2007 4:02 PM |
Alert | I have a feeling my post is going to be a book..... I am running RAID 0 because I want smoking fast disk I/O for my games. Figuring out which flavor of RAID you are going to use is a fraction of the battle. To complete a high performance drive array, you need to tell the RAID controller the optimal stripe size. And this depends on charateristics of the files you are working with. So if you have a single drive array, then you are tuning for a specific file charateristic. In other words, if you tune this RAID 0 array for BF2, you COULD be impacting performance for other computer uses such as video editing, databases, etc. This is why you typically see this depth of tuning on servers used in specific tasks (Microsoft Exchange, SQL, Oracle, etc....) Now you could create a 2nd RAID array, using additional HDs, and tune it for another use and store your files accordingly. More $$$ though. Keep in mind that two 150GB drives in RAID 0 results in 300GB of storage where the same drives in RAID 1 gives you only 150GB. Now to build on what I mentioned above, lets talk about these performance test tools. Some of the tools use canned test routines. This results in people tuning their drives for that test application, in order to sqeeze out good test results. However the test may not look anything like their typical production disk I/O. The best test tools will allow you to modify the test criteria. So if you want to mess around with different RAID configurations and stripe sizes, then install your O/S (obviously with your RAID driver) and even your applications then create an image. When your ready to make a change to your array configuration, then go ahead (it will wipe your drives) and then simply restore the image. I need to go through this same procedure as my first configuration (single Raptor non-RAID) setup was exactly the same as Adopted's Raptor system. Now since I RAID mine, I'm slower than Adopted's. However I did not spend a single minute characterizing my BF2 file I/O (I striped my disks @32k). I posted this comment in the past, but I can't close this post until I say it again. Creating a duplicate of your HD's data and keeping it in your house is called a copy, not a backup. A backup will survive physical theft, fire, earthquake, lightning strike, flood, etc. where a copy might not, and that is because a backup is some place else.  | | | |
| tekel
Posts:321
| | 09/29/2007 1:41 AM |
Alert | | Sissy. ;) | |
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| outlawaol
Posts:362
| | 10/01/2007 9:36 PM |
Alert | Well, got this RAID in play. And I did notice a performance increase. Its not super uber fast, but its noticable. Interesting bit though is on Vista I didnt need to install the RAID drivers during setup (nice waste as I bought a floppy drive to do it). In fact, when I did install them my "single" drive disappeared! So, I just installed to the drive it detected and all went well.
Thanks for the input guys, this raid business was easier then I thought!
And I'll post up some disk I/O in the near future.
:) | | | |
| outlawaol
Posts:362
| | 10/01/2007 10:36 PM |
Alert | 
Well, these are my results for my new RAID setup.
:)
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| tekel
Posts:321
| | 10/02/2007 1:28 AM |
Alert | | Didn't need a floppy for Vista anyway. You can install RAID/SCSI drivers from a CD or even a flash drive now! I used the microSD card in my Pearl to do mine. | |
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| Sabith1
Posts:83
| | 10/02/2007 9:28 AM |
Alert | Floppy, what's that ??? 
Sabith | | | |
| outlawaol
Posts:362
| | 10/02/2007 10:18 PM |
Alert | Yea, I noticed that when I was installing it. You could "browse" all kinds of media. Although my raid drivers where on a floppy. I was assuming that vista was going to be like XP, where it would only take from a floppy on install.
All well, the silly drive was only $10, and its a samsung! Woo! Ive got 1.44mb of storage now! :D
And teek, isnt my R/W speeds nice? Hehehe..... ;) | | | |
| Rooster
Posts:546
| | 10/03/2007 1:07 AM |
Alert | I just have to ask - Is the floppy at least USB so you can use it anywhere, or did you actually buy the good ol oldschool ribbon cable hookin up to da modaboad kinda floppy drive? :)
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| outlawaol
Posts:362
| | 10/03/2007 2:31 AM |
Alert | | Oh yea, this baby is old school! haha! :D | | | |
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