Better hd performanceFollow

This really really depends on what you need to use raid for.

There are three reasons for using raid. The first two are totally different, the third is related to the other two.

1. Data protection. You want to make sure that if a HD fails, you don't lose your data. Thus, you utilize a raid system to allow you to recover from this.

2. Data size. You have a need to reference a single disk device that is larger then the size of any single physical disk on your system. Thus, you use raid to increase the apparent size of the disk.

3. Data performance. You need a disk that is *really* fast. How you do that is by increasing the ratio of read/write heads (spindles) to data blocks accessed in any given read/write operation. Any of a number of raid systems can help with this to varying degrees.


Raid 0+1 is concatenation with striping. What this means is that multiple disks are simply combined into one logical disk, but data blocks are formatted in "stripes" across all disks at a time. This means that if you want to write 24 blocks of data, instead of all 24 needing to be written to a single disk (usually with one head running across a single arc on the disk), each disk will write portions of that data on each disk at the same time (so you'd get 4 heads each writing 6 blocks of data, which clearly will be faster).

This is technically the absolute "fastest" way to read and write data to a set of disks. In some cases, you'll even see people format each physical disk to be significantly smaller then the full size just to minimize the seek time between operations (the only data areas used on the disk are those near to the "home" location of the head, significantly increasing performance on database applications where you'll get a huge number of small read/write operations over time).


Raid 5 is not "fast". However, it is the fastest of the redundant systems (data protection). With raid 5, you will lose one disks worth of space. However, the parity blocks are spread out across all disks, so you don't get a "hot disk" problem (raid 4 writes all parity to one disk, meaning that while the normal writes spread across the other disks, every single write involves a write to the parity disk, slowing down the entire operation). So, you'll lose 25% of your disk (you'll get 3 disks worth of data space in a 4 disk raid5 arrangement), and you'll lose some speed (it's still doing basically 33% more seek/writes for each write operation), but you'll be protected from any single disk failure.


So it's really up to what you need. I'm firmly of the opinion that for a home machine, and especially for a gaming machine, there is pretty much zero reason to use raid. The only raid solution that's actually faster then just using a single disk normally is raid 0+1, but you're only going to see marginal increase in speed (unless you do some crazy formatting!), and you *increase* the odds that you'll be adversely affected by a failed disk.

Honestly, you'll get 10 times more speed up from adding memory to your system, or getting a better video card, then you'll ever see from using raid in that configuration. So doing it for speed is kinda not worth it IMO. Doing it for data protection might be, but I still don't really advocate it. Raid5 is probably your best "online" disk protection system. However, I really don't think that most home users need it. How often do you change data? How much data delta do you really care about? Remember, that you're writing extra data everytime you use your disk whether it's data you care about losing or not (so temp files while running the OS are protected, as are a zillion other things).

Most of the data on a home computer is static. The OS is easily reinstalled. Same with the software you run on it. All you really care about are saved files you've created. So for most things, you can simply burn files you care about to a CD/DVD, or use that extra disk you would have used otherwise in a raid system to keep backup copies of data you care about.

If you're talking about an mp3 library, or something similar (photoshop work, whatever), then raid5 would be the way to go. You don't care about speed (you don't need a super fast disk for those applications), but you do care about the data not being lost.

If you're talking about performance from a speed perspective, I'd simply set up the disks as separate devices, make sure I install my applications on a different device as the OS, and spend my money on more ram.


Um. I'd also recommend *against* putting the OS disk (drive C:) in the same raid device as your data. So if you are doing say an mp3 library, make the raid 5 device out of the disks left over after you've installed the OS. You will simply absolutely kill any performance on your system if the OS is installed on a raid disk. Just accept that if the OS disk fails, you'll replace it and reinstall, and keep your data on your raid array. It'll work much better that way.

Honestly, I wouldn't spend much on faster disk for a gaming machine. It's kinda pointless IMO. It's kind of like carrying a towel around instead of an umbrella in case it rains. Unless you are runnning a database application and/or fileserver, the whole point is to *avoid* having to read or write to disk as much as possible (or at least avoid having to wait on read/write). For a game machine, you're vastly better off spending money on more ram, a faster cpu, and a faster video card, then on faster disk. If you're reading from disk, your running at a relative snail's pace, no matter what you are doing. Build your game system so that you spend as little time doing that as possible *first* and then worry about disk speed after you've maxed out everything else.


I'm also curious as to how much of your percieved performance improvement is just "new gadget" placebo? There are very few hardware configurations right now that utilize SATA drives in a manner that actually does realize the improved performance (which right now is only about 30% max anyway). A standard home computer will *not*. It'll perform at the same 100mb/s max speed that you'll get with any drive (due to driver, controller, and bus issues). I know that in top end file servers and SANs, you can see the improvement from SATA drives, but I'm not aware of a home-user efficient solution just yet. They're there. They're available. But you're really buying a disk now so that it'll take advantage of potential hardware availability later. Don't get me wrong. They're good drives (funny thing is that I recall explaining to someone how the configuration of those drives would be more efficent *years* before anyone made them). But I'm not convinced it's a cost effective solution for a home system. Maybe if you're a bleeding edge type of person, but that's not something I'd recommend for the average user.

Biggest bang for the buck for a home gaming system is to buy more and/or faster ram, and a better video card. Next is cpu and mainboard replacement. I'd also put things like your network card, router, internet connection and ISP performance in there as well, assuming you do online gaming at all. Finally, somewhere waaaaay at the bottom of the list would be worring about the disk speed. It's just a non-issue for 99% of all home users.