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To Raid, or not to Raid.......

post #1 of 7
12/5/03 at 11:40pm
Thread Starter 
Simple question, looking for opinions.

I have 2 7200RPM 60gig drives in my New 8890....
I have a raid controller in the laptop....

60 gig can be borderline for space for me....
I am a pack rat when it comes to files.

How much perfomance increase can I expect if I decide to setup a Mirror on the laptop.

I am planning on doing ALOT of AV capturing. I have old HI-8 tapes that I am going to put on to DVD.

I play ALOT of games.

Will I get enough of a performance increase to justify loosing 60gig?

Thanks
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post #2 of 7
12/6/03 at 1:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarphBobo
...How much perfomance increase can I expect if I decide to setup a Mirror on the laptop.
....
Will I get enough of a performance increase to justify loosing 60gig?
You will gain NO performance increase going with RAID-1 (Mirror); in fact you will lose a little due to the overhead, but that'll be negligable.

However, you will have protection for all your important pack-rat stash!

As for the AV, a 5400rpm drive was fine for me doing capture over firewire from miniDV, so your 7200's should be fine.

I'd recommend RAID-1 (Mirror) if you need the security; however, you may want to invest in a decent 3.5" HD enclosure (firewire preferably) and use an external HD for short-term backups and archives. Burn DVD's for longer-term storage.

-myrkat
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post #3 of 7
12/6/03 at 4:27am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by myrkat
You will gain NO performance increase going with RAID-1 (Mirror); in fact you will lose a little due to the overhead, but that'll be negligable.

However, you will have protection for all your important pack-rat stash!

As for the AV, a 5400rpm drive was fine for me doing capture over firewire from miniDV, so your 7200's should be fine.

I'd recommend RAID-1 (Mirror) if you need the security; however, you may want to invest in a decent 3.5" HD enclosure (firewire preferably) and use an external HD for short-term backups and archives. Burn DVD's for longer-term storage.

-myrkat
Really, NO perf increase at all????

That does not make any sense.... Are the controllers not so good in these machines? I know other PC's that I have built, I have gotten a pretty good increase outta Mirroring.

I do appreciate the input though..

As for an external drive, I do have a 60 gig firewire drive. Slow as hell though..

I do use that as a back up..


Thanks again

Other input is welcome!!!
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post #4 of 7
12/7/03 at 7:38am
Are we on the same page here? Can I ask the obvious question - do you mean to mirror (RAID 1) or stripe (RAID 0) your disks?

RAID 0 will give you an average of 80% increase in throughput, RAID 1 will be 5%-10% slower for writes and about 10% faster for reads (this may not be the case for the Promise RAID controller in the 8890's).

I question the need for RAID 1 (mirror) in a laptop. We have just had a running discussion on the reliability issues of RAID 0 vs single disks here. Unless you are running a transaction server on your laptop and/or cannot afford to lose anything in under 24 hours, then mirroring is a waste of a good 7200 RPM disk. As that thread on probability points out you have a 4% chance in 2.5 years of one member of a 2 member RAID set taking your data out. I give Windows XP better odds than that . In fact RAID 1 will not help you if software scribbles all over your files. Only a non-live backup will save you there.

My recommendation is to setup RAID 0 and blast away. It is what I am about to do once my 2nd 7200 RPM disk arrives. Oh wait, I have to order it first .
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post #5 of 7
12/7/03 at 10:08am
Steve, I am running a raid 0 array of 2 60gb 5400rpm drives. Not only is it faster, but you lose no space at all going raid 0. One poster claimed that he couldn't capture properly because the raid controllers were sharing an irq that his avid software had to have, or wasn't getting the proper requirements needed by his software because of a proprietory non-sharing of resources by his software and that the 8890 was using a shared irq with the drive controlers, and firewire. (I don't exactly remember the problem)

You will have to reinstall the OS when you switch to raid, but it may be possible to ghost your existing drive, and restore the image to the new array(because it will merely appear as a bigger dirve.). I may be headed the exact opposite direction to you. If I do, I will try ghosting first, because I've invested so much time in setting my 8890 up. My reason is that Suse Linux can't see I have windows installed, and to proceed with a dual boot system would hose my windows install.
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post #6 of 7
12/7/03 at 10:37am
Thanks for the info on Suse btw. As much as I am looking forward to having RAID 0, I am going to loath the amount of work involved. I am not sure if you can ghost Windows onto the new drive. Doesn't windows need to load a copy of the RAID drivers. I know during Windows XP install it asks for the floppy with the RAID or ATA drivers. I thought you had to start from scratch if you switch on RAID under Windows. I am not sure and may be wrong (crosses fingers in order to save some time). Besides installing Win XP Pro I also want to set up a RH9 Linux partition. And just to make life even more interesting add a dash of vmware . Of course I want to dual boot as well as have linux under vmware access the linux partition and have Windows also access the linux area (yes I do have drivers for that thank heavens).

Mojo was the Avid hardware gizmo was having problems with. One reason I went to Adobe Video collection (when it arrives ).

You know besides not being able to use any other laptop, these 8890 are a real pain. They do so much there is just too much. Will it never end.
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post #7 of 7
12/7/03 at 12:27pm
Thread Starter 

Thanks for the input!

Thanks for all the input given...

I do believe I will be setting up a stripe....

Maybe not today.... But soon....


Thanks again...
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