i was looking at this forum because i have the same question. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245015-30-another-thread-ds3r-ds3l and they said the only difference is RAID and mroe SATA ports. i think 4 SATA ports is good enough for me, but i was wondering what raid was. i tried wiki to understand what it was, but that just got more confusing. so i want to know what it is, how it is beneficial, and do i need it? off topic question. i was reading about nehalem and i was wondering, since its comming up this year, should i just wait and rebuild the pc i planed on getting the end of this summer? is the price going substantially different for the parts now? like for the q6600?
Like Sam said, unless you are going to have 4 or more hard drives running, with lots of important data, no need to get into all that. RAID is a form of redundancy. Say you have a RAID1 setup on two drives, if one of those drives were to fail, you will not lose your data because all the info would be mirrored on the other drive. RAID is typically used in systems that get lots of I/O on a daily basis - i.e. network servers. SATA ports has nothing to do with RAID. That's just the number of ports that you can connect from a SATA controller to a SATA drive.
I dont think RAID should be ignored totally and in some cases it brings some advantages to the user, although for the common user this feature sometimes is really not a necesity. But for example in my case I have taken advantage of the RAID capabilities in my motherboard. RAID is a technology related with how your computer chipset manages your hard drives, and its most simplest form we have RAID 0 and RAID 1. Where can RAID 1 be usefull? you have store very important information on your Hard Drive and you want to make sure that even if it fails you can still have a backup available immediately without need of even having a software or scheduling one yourself. How to use RAID 1? You need to identical Hard Drives connected to the RAID controller. Lets say you have two 80GB drives, in RAID 1 configuration windows will only see one 80gb drive, but all the information you copy to this drive will be copied into both HDD, so in case one of the HDD fails you will have the other hard drive with the same information you had on the first one. Where can RAID 0 be usefull? You have a need for performance, and would want to have fastest data transfer between large files on your HDD. Also you have two drives that you would like to join as one for better management of your information How to use RAID 0? As in raid 1 you need to identical drives connected to the RAID controller, lets say you connect two 80Gb hard drives in this configuration, windows in this case will detect only one 160GB drives, but all the information you write in this virtual HDD will be written and read as almost twice the standard rate of the drive alone (because half of the information is written on one HDD and the other Half in the other HDD at the same time) giving you a boost in performance. But be carefull if one of the drive fails in this configuration all the your data will be lost, so using RAID 0 puts you at a greater risk of data loss if one of the HDD fails Personally I have a RAID 0 config with two 80GB drives, which gives me performance in loading times for my files, until know I had no problems whatsoever with data loss or so, and have been able to enjoy a comparable performance to those 10,000RPM drives without the extra expenses of it. Edit: I corrected the explanation on RAID 0, making clear it helps between transfers of large files in your HDD, thanks at samorris in making that aspect clear
Now that standard hard drives have higher read/write rates (indeed, I own a 36GB Raptor and 750GB spinpoint F1, their R/W rate is exactly the same) there's no need to buy expensive drives or use RAID to get the transfer speed up. Raptors are useful not for data transfer, but for access latency, which helps far more when loading the OS, and any programs that are split into many files. RAID actually makes write latency worse, so for the average user it's not something I'd consider. Only for moving bulk data around, and realistically, you should use RAID for redundancy too. 'Proper RAID' in my eyes is a large array of drives running in RAID5, or even better RAID6, off a dedicated hardware PCI express RAID card.
thanks a milllion paztelu for the pro/con and explaination of the raid and sam. if i do decide to use raid0, would it mean that the OS will be installed on both HDD? like say if one fails, ill simply boot up from the second HDD?
Absolutely not, that's RAID1 - that keeps a continuously updating backup copy of one HDD on the other. RAID0 pairs them together for supposedly higher speed, but if one drive goes, you lose the data from both drives. With RAID1, if one drive goes, all your data's intact, but you only get half as much storage. e.g.: 2x500GB drives, no RAID: 1TB, normal speed, standard redundancy (one drive goes, you lose the data from that drive, and only that drive) 2x500GB drives in RAID0: 1TB, high speed, Absolutely no redundancy (one drive goes, lose everything) 2x500GB drives in RAID1: 500GB, normal speed, paired redundancy (one drive goes, no data loss) 4x500GB drives in RAID5: 1.5TB, normal speed, solo redundancy (one drive goes, no data loss, any more and you lose some data) 4x500GB drives in RAID6: 1TB, normal speed, dual redundancy (up to two drives can go, no data loss) 4x500GB drives in RAID10: 1TB, high speed, paired redundancy(one drive goes, no data loss)
As you can see the other RAID configurations are in a sense a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. But unless you really know about this technology and may be able to get a true advantage from using it, dont bother with it. Although if you get the possibility of using it you can try it, but dont make this a factor in when making your choice of a motherboard. Hope it helps.
oh sorry i actually meant raid1, where the two HDD act as identical. i got mixed up. but thanks for clearing up other questions sam. so what would happen if i had raid1, will the OS still installed on one HDD if the other died? or does it only copy the data of things like music/photos/ ect.?
RAID 1, uses one drive as a mirror of the other, that is that everything that is on one drive copies itself to the other, that is from hidden windows files, to your music. Lets say in the case one of your HDD fails from a RAID 1 configuration, you wont even notice it because the other HDD holds that same information even your windows installation! this process occurs without even the user noticing but indeed is very helpfull.
wow, thats very nice. well, thanks guys! i think im going with the RAID board. im not using RAID now, but when i get the board, i will have the chance to use RAID when i do want it. thanks alot
I would see no reason to waste a whole drive with a RAID1 configuration, not to mention the money it would cost for a real RAID setup - I'm not talking about those half ass controller cards either, I'm talking LSI, Adaptec, or any HP Smart Array controller. Why not just buy a cheap USB hard drive and back all your data up on that? Like I said in my previous post, RAID is typically used on setups that get tons of I/O on a daily basis. Chances of your hard drive failing under normal usage is pretty slim.
