Raid

[tfcoulson]

Recently replaced my laptop which broke on me with a new 17" vortex iv, managed to get the hard drives back from the insurers so now Ive got 2 hyper x ssd's, and a 1.5tb drive plus a couple of other external drives. So seem to be getting a bit of a pointless collection....
Anyway, question is, I noticed on the config page on the site that you can select either raid 0 or raid 1 if you have 2 of the same drives. What exactly is raid though? Doesn't make too much sense to me. Also is it worth doing with the 2 ssd's? Otherwise Ill just have one spare sitting around.
Thanks

 

[steaky360]

RAID essentially combines two (or more ) disks (SSDs or HDDs etc.) into one array. There are a few different types, essentially they are either stripe or mirror (or a combination of stripe + mirror) - Striping uses both the disks simultaneously to give faster write speeds, mirroring copies data onto both disks giving redundancy.

Whether its worth doing or not is basically up to you, its unlikely you'd see the benefit of striping two ssd's together but hell if its going spare

 

[keynes]

If you click on the ? Sign you get some information. For general use and gaming it seems overkill to use raid with 2 SSDs.

 

[tfcoulson]

Ah thanks, Id forgotten about the ? mark bit, makes the most sense so far.

 

[scottm]

As a personal opinion, I would recommend AGAINST using RAID on any non-server computer.

The various RAID configurations are designed to address performance and data-loss concerns, on high-availability, high-load servers.

RAID 0 (striping) can improve performance but will double your risk of data loss through disk failure, so you don't want that. And for home/desktop use (or anything else that isn't a disk-intensive server), you won't notice any advantage of RAID 0's performance gain.

RAID 1 (mirroring) protects against disk failure but halves your disk capacity and doesn't give you as much protection from data loss as any number of other backup options. Also it slows performance a bit. The point of RAID 1 is to provide a 'hot swap' disk for critical server applications, which (unless I misunderstand your usage) you won't need.

All the other RAID configurations also have more downsides (again, for home / non-server computer use) than benefits - or if not downsides, the benefits aren't useful - so aren't worth worrying about.

Stick with ordinary disks. Use SSD where possible (over HDD) where performance is a concern. Ensure you have a robust backup strategy in place to deal with data loss concerns. Those two things will be far better investments of your time and money than worrying about RAID.

 

[nathanjrb]

My home computer is non-server and RAID is essential for my video editing work. I think it's more if you actually >need< It than whether or not it's a server.

 

[scottm]

RAID is essential for my video editing work

As a genuine question, being unfamiliar with the demands of video editing: what RAID configuration do you use, and what aspect of it makes it "essential" ?

 

[steaky360]

As a genuine question, being unfamiliar with the demands of video editing: what RAID configuration do you use, and what aspect of it makes it "essential" ?

I'm going to guess RAID 0 and 'For increased Speed'

Can't see any reason why you'd need a mirror to carry out video editing - I can see why backups are handy but not mirroring specifically.

Although I'd not take any faith in that, I'm simply sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong here

 

[nathanjrb]

I've just implemented a RAID 5, which offers the best performance in terms of speed and redundancy. I'm going to have wedding footage stored on it - the last thing I want is a drive failure. Also going to be backed up off-site, obviously.

 

[steaky360]

I've just implemented a RAID 5, which offers the best performance in terms of speed and redundancy. I'm going to have wedding footage stored on it - the last thing I want is a drive failure. Also going to be backed up off-site, obviously.

I stand corrected

 

[scottm]

OK, I understand the use of RAID for real-time protection against drive failure until you can do a full backup (later the same day, I guess).

Still curious, what transfer data-rate is actually required to/from the disk for (real-time) video editing? I suppose I'm just a bit surprised; the data rates of modern disks seem superficially (to me anyway, not an expert on video) plenty fast enough for simultaneous reading and writing of video in real time. For my education, what am I missing?