RAID 0 - Performance worth it?

[NewbMediaGuy]

I'm looking into replacing my 80 gig IDE hard drive with either a SATA drive of similar size, or two SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration. I know I'll essentially be doubling my chances of a drive failure, but as long as I've worked with computers (for over 10 years), I've never had a drive that failed on me. Either I'm really lucky and my time is coming, or it's not that common of a problem.

I do have a zip drive I could easily save any important data, which is probably what I would do in the event one of the drives failed, because I really can't afford 4 drives for RAID 0 + 1 What I want to know is if the performance boost would be worth it, or if I'll get enough of a boost just going from an IDE drive to a SATA drive.

I'm currently getting really bad latency when using Fruity Loops, so I don't know if this is the cause or I just need to mess around with the setup. Hope you guys can give me some helpful tips on what I should do, below is my current PC setup:

P4 Northwood 3.0 ghz
Asus P4P800-C deluxe mobo
Delta 1010lt soundcard
80 gig Western Digital hard drive (IDE)

Oh and one last thing, if I do go with the RAID 0 configuration, what drives are best as far as avoiding a failure? I've never had a problem with the Western Digital drives so I'll probably stick with them, but just want to get some other opinions of maybe other drives that might last longer. Thanks!

 

[chamelious]

Hmm well, the latency problem shouldn't be caused by your hard drive really. Having your system files on a second hard drive or drives will be your biggest jump in performance. If you're going from IDE to S-ATA i presume you're upgrading your MOBO too so you'll be able to geta current gen SATA 2 HD, again better perfermance, they have NCQ and stuff. RAID 0 is generally not used by people who dont have more money than sense as it provides very little in a performance boost and doubles the chance of you loosing everything.

 

[drstawl]

I do have a zip drive I could easily save any important data, which is probably what I would do in the event one of the drives failed..

You are forgetting that if you are using two drives in RAID 0 config and even ONE fails, ALL of your data will be lost so you can forget about the zip drive because at that juncture it and the failed drive will be doorstops.

If you are willing to be really anal about backups the worst that could happen is you lose the data saved during your last session. No big deal. But I've never seen anybody do anything but brag about how organized their backup procedures are; it's time consuming and it won't happen.

 

[NewbMediaGuy]

no I know if one drive fails I lose it all, but what I meant was anything I knew I had to keep I could save on a zip disk just in case I do lose all my stuff. I still wouldn't like that to happen, but I think a zip disk is a bit more affordable right now than 4 drives to run in RAID 0 + 1

And I do agree that I see more people bragging about their backup setup more than I see people talking about drive failures, which is why I think I should be fine.

I also wanted to know if lets say I set up a RAID 0 configuration, and later I want to add 2 drives to mirror those, can I do that or do all 4 drives need to be purchased at the same time to make sure they are all closely alike?

 

[NewbMediaGuy]

Hmm well, the latency problem shouldn't be caused by your hard drive really. Having your system files on a second hard drive or drives will be your biggest jump in performance. If you're going from IDE to S-ATA i presume you're upgrading your MOBO too so you'll be able to geta current gen SATA 2 HD, again better perfermance, they have NCQ and stuff. RAID 0 is generally not used by people who dont have more money than sense as it provides very little in a performance boost and doubles the chance of you loosing everything.

Actually I'm keeping the mobo, I originally got an IDE drive because at the time it was cheaper, it was my first PC build, and I heard of problems with installing a SATA drive on a new copy of windows.

The motherboard itself supports SATA as well as RAID 0, 1, and 0+1. It doesn't support SATA 2, but I thought most hard drives don't really need SATA 2 because SATA 1 is still good enough...maybe I'm wrong on that.

About having XP on one drive, how would you install programs like that? I mean if you say install Fruity Loops on a 100gb drive, while XP is on a 60gb drive, when Fruity Loops tries to drop some files in the systems folder does it ask what drive to put them on or does it automatically know it's on a different drive than it's being installed?