Billydakid.

Basically there's no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.

Bev.

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@Billydakid wrote:

Hi there ppl,

was wondering how much faster is RAID 0 compared to a non-RAID hard drive configuration? I know its faster and I'm hoping that somebody knows from experience as I'm considering going back to a RAID 0 the way my PC was shipped. I prefer having 2 seperate drives so as soon I got my PC I changed to a non-RAID but if the speed difference is noticable then I'll definately change to a RAID 0.

If anybody does know from experience could you please say where/when you notice it. Application loading? Using Applications? Boot up? Or generally all the time?

Thx already.

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@Billydakid wrote:

Hi Jankerson,

 

that doesn't sound very worthwhile for me and I have 2 drives. However the 4 drive scenario sounds much better, not that I'll be running 4 drives.

 

I've heard that you notice the speed increase in everything and that's what makes me want to get the most out of my PC, even at the risk of losing everything on both drives with any drive failure.

 

Even though I have a P4 3.4Ghz, 2x250Gb hd (non-RAID) and 2Gb ram I'm still kinda disappointed in the overall speed. Maybe my expectations were too high? Maybe the system isn't able perform as it could due to the h/w and s/w holding it back? Maybe its just the 32-bit WinXp Pro thats holding the PC back, and the future 64-bit versions will let systems run at their potential speed? I guess I won't see the lightning speeds I anticipated for some time. 

 

Anybody out there with 2 hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration??? If so can you let me know what your increase in speed and performance is like.

 

Thx already

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Are you still running the Dell image?

Or have you clean installed XP?

What do you mean overall speed?

It's not your hardware that is holding it back for sure.

Sorry you're absolutely right, its not the hardware for sure as that's yet to be pushed to the limits until the s/w catches up with it. I just meant the s/w including the OS.

Yeah I'm running the Dell Image.

By overall speed I mean the speed that everything loads and runs at from loading applications and their speed to complete tasks. Boot up, AV scans, defrag are all very fast very fast though.

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@Billydakid wrote:

Sorry you're absolutely right, its not the hardware for sure as that's yet to be pushed to the limits until the s/w catches up with it. I just meant the s/w including the OS.

Yeah I'm running the Dell Image.

By overall speed I mean the speed that everything loads and runs at from loading applications and their speed to complete tasks. Boot up, AV scans, defrag are all very fast very fast though.

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Check your statup.

1. Goto Start, Run
2. Type MSCONFIG
3. Click Startup
4. Uncheck the programs you don't need yo startup when Windows boots.

Also do disk cleanups before you run Defrag.

If it is feeling sluggish you can always Clean install XP and just install the Programs that you use, that should really speed things up for you.

Going to a Raid 0 really won't speed things.

A better option would be to get a Western Digital Raptor (10,000rpm SATA) drive and use that as your boot drive. That will speed things up ALOT.

If you look at my sig you will notice that I am Running SCSI Hard drives and Using a Seagate Cheetah X15 15,000 rpm HD.

It depends on several factors, the main one being your slowest drive if they are not all the same.

There are other factors too, the only way to really tell is to run benchmarks. Remember, different

RAID levels are faster at reading randomly & sequentially and the same for writes. You need to

know what size files you're dealing with also. Small files can take only one cluster where large

ones can take up many. There are many factors when dealing with RAID, you just can't say

RAID 0 is best for everything or RAID 5 is best. Also remember levels 10 & 50. Plus RAID 3

& 4 which many people don't even know exist. (Mainly because they are pretty useless). The

most important thing in my opinion is redundancy which is why I prefer RAID 5 though mirroring

has it's benefits in reduced cost (RAID 1), needing only 2 drives. Do the research, don't just read

one article or talk to one "expert", as they're usually not. It doesn't hurt to run several test senarios

too if you have the time and resources (money). One last thing, are you going with SCSI RAID

or SATA RAID, this can make a difference.

Thx for the replies ppl,

I have 2x250gb hd (@7200 rpm), 2gb ram (@533mhz), P4 3.4ghz. After reading your replies and doing some research it seems that the best option for performance, reliability and speed would be to go for 2 faster drives over RAID 0.

Don't get me wrong, my PC isn't sluggish. However, I'm sure in a year or so to come that 64-bit technology s/w will make it appear so.

Thanks also abspp99,

I was hoping that somebody would reply with news of their own experience of when and where the RAID 0 configuration would really be beneficial. I'm now gonna hold off completely on migrating to RAID 0 as I really wanted to feel the benefit all round and not just when it comes to more demanding stuff. Again, faster drives would be more beneficial all round so that's where I'll spend the money when I decide to do some upgrading in the future. These machines will show their true potential in the future when the software catches up with them.

Thx already