RAID help

[blue_dirt]

ok, here goes...

i have an 80 gb hdd, but it is almost full, so i am going to get another 80 gb hdd, or higher. i posted this tread on the lantro site before, and have asked several ppl, but it still confuses me. Can someone please explain what a RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 2, RAID 3, RAID 4, etc is?

Please use non-complex, easy to understand words, as i get confused easily.

i am pretty sure a RAID 0 is possible with 2 80 gb hdd's

[cyan]

http://www.ebabble.net/html/types.html

[GotNoRice]

Raid-0 is where you take Two or more drives, and basically make it all seem as if it was one huge drive. There is also a speed increase because the way the data is written to the drives, each drive only has to do half (or a 3rd, or a 4th depending on # of drives) of the work. The down side is that if one of the drives goes, you lose all the data on all of the drives. Two 80gig drives becomes 1 160gig drive that is twice as fast. (In theory)

Raid-1 is where you take two drives and mirror them. the advantage is obviously that if one drive fails, you lose no data. There can be a slight read advantage since the data can be read from both discs, but nothing like Raid-0. Two 80gig drives becomes 1 80gig drive that is just about the same speed as before, but one drive can die and you will still be fine.

Raid 0-4 aren't that important really...

Raid 10 and 0+1 are just combinations of Raid 1 and Raid 0. It involves basically mirroring a pair of Raid-0 drives. In this case 4 80gig drives becomes 1 160gig drive that is twice as fast, and you can lose a drive without losing your data. The difference between 10 and 0+1 is whether you are taking a mirrored drive and doing Raid-0 on it or if you're taking a Raid-0 drive and mirroring it.

Raid-5 involves a parity drive, and tries to bring redundency to a a Raid-0 like situation without having to have twice as many drives (as you would with raid-1 or 10/0+1). Basically 1/5th of each drive is used as "backup", and that is enough that if one drive dies, you will be okay. Of course 1/5th of your total capacity is lost. If you had 5 80gig drives, you would get a 320gig drive that is very fast on reads and somewhat slow on writes.

I personally like Raid-0. I've been running two Raid-0 arrays (2x120 and 2x200) one of them for almost two years without problems.

[xwred1]

Raid0 sucks when a drive goes though. For any remotely important storage, like my /home, I use mirrors. If I had the money, then it'd be a raid5.

[Moddy]

Originally posted by xwred1
If I had the money, then it'd be a raid5.

Truer words were never spoken.

[Cygnus]

Don't go RAID with just 2 drives. It's a waste and you'd have to be a complete idiot to use your boot/OS drive in a RAID set.

[blue_dirt]

Originally posted by Cygnus
and you'd have to be a complete idiot to use your boot/OS drive in a RAID set.

ok, WHAT? boot/OS drive...all i see is blah blah blah. please explain. oh, and don't say:

www.google.com

[Donnie_Doritos]

I think he means the drive you have windows on
os = operating system and you boot off it. yea

[FAngel]

BD, it really depends on how much you care if you were to have a crash. If you went with a Raid 0 setup, you would have great performance, but a drive faliure would result in complete loss of data. But if you used both drives sepertally, you'd only lose half of your data.
But then you wouldn't get the performance advantage of the raid setup.
So you other option would be the Raid 1 or 5 options.

[Bullfrog]

If the computer you want to do the RAID array on is your only computer then I would stay away from RAID 0. You will have no means to recovery from a drive failure or glitch in the array. If you are like other hardcore gamers that have multiple systems you can take risk. Personally I have a number of systems so I can recover easily from a drive failure. But on my critical setups I use a different combinations of RAID arrays to protect myself.

[Donnie_Doritos]

Question, when a raid set up "fails" does that mean the drive is no longer useable or you just need to do the raid thing again?

[xwred1]

If a drive isn't working, the raid will fail.

If you are doing a raid0 and the drive fails, then nothing on your raid is readable. If you can't convince that drive to work again... kiss your data goodbye.

If you are doing a raid1 and a drive fails, the raid will still be working (or technically not, depends on the implementation). But all your data is still there on the other drive.

If you are doing a raid5 and a drive fails, the raid will still work just fine (although it can't take another drive failure unless you replace the dead drive). You just replace the dead drive and rebuild the array. If you are fancy you might have spare drives, spinning in the computer but with no data, ready to take over the moment a drive dies. You can do this with raid1 also.

[blue_dirt]

wow, that "fancy" stuff sounds really sweet. i was looking at the "Killer Deals" section, and i saw the ad for the 160 gb hdd, which i will prolly get, but can i run 2 seperate drives? is that even possible? ...so, i would have an 80, and a 160...do they have to be connected? any and all info would be very much appreciated.

[Poncho]

Originally posted by Cygnus
Don't go RAID with just 2 drives. It's a waste and you'd have to be a complete idiot to use your boot/OS drive in a RAID set.

Really...So I'm an idiot then. Would you mind explaining to me why I'm an idiot then. I would like to know so I can improve.

[)( C4m3L_T03 )(]

Originally posted by blue_dirt
wow, that "fancy" stuff sounds really sweet. i was looking at the "Killer Deals" section, and i saw the ad for the 160 gb hdd, which i will prolly get, but can i run 2 seperate drives? is that even possible? ...so, i would have an 80, and a 160...do they have to be connected? any and all info would be very much appreciated.

Your 160 drive would only be seen as a 80gb if used in a raid 0, 1, array. in a raid array, the slowest and smallest drive will bring the performance of the others down. This is why you should try to get the exact same drive throughout the array.

[blue_dirt]

ok, so an array would involve RAID? and, also, there is no way to use 2 hdd's without RAID?also, is there a way i could transfer all the info from the 80, to the 160?

[Donnie_Doritos]

Originally posted by blue_dirt
there is no way to use 2 hdd's without RAID?also, is there a way i could transfer all the info from the 80, to the 160?
You mean use the 2 hard drivers normally? Yea you can, one drive for windows the other for games, music etc. If you want to transfer crap from the smaller hd to the bigger you can just drag and drop. If you have windows on the 80gig and want to use the 160gig as your windows drive, there are program to do it. I think partition magic works

[blue_dirt]

yeah, that is all i really wanted to do...since RAID failure sounds imminent. so, RAID merely boosts performance? cool, thanks everyone