Anyone have RAID setups?

[dac7nco]

Consumer drives have an URE rating of 10^14, w9hich is ~12TB. If a drive in your hypothetical 12TB array fails, you're likely to have an unrecoverable read error while the controller is rebuilding. Rebuilding takes many, many hours. Even if you have another 2TB disk attached as a "hot-standby", the time it takes to bring online will likely frag the array.

This is, of course, if you actually have a drive fail - I've had arrays that NEVER failed, but I've also had a 10-drive RAID-6 made with 450GB SAS enterprise-grade drives drop two drives in one hour, and the array died while rebuilding.

 

[martixy]

So it's all about playing the chances.

Thought it was more economical with 5/6. Guess I could be wrong(don't know about what enterprise workload does to a drive).

 

[dac7nco]

While a 3-drive RAID-5 seems more economical than having separate backup and data drives, you should remember that while reading/writing, ALL drives in the array are active, as the RAID stripes the data across all drives. Backup drives don't get used all that much, which seems to be a mitigating factor (to me). If all you're doing is incremental backups, then speed is much less of an issue. Also, most consumer (cheap) drives aren't designed to perform RAID duties.

 

[bigboxes]

I would have imagined that RAID5 and RAID6 are the most commonly used...
Seriously - what are the chances that a second/third drive will fail for an independent reason within the timespan it takes to rebuild the RAID(too lazy to calc right now)?

My current setup is 2 WD7502ABYS drives in RAID0, works well enough for me. I do have another 400GB drive, but it doesn't factor in the RAID setup.

My ideal storage solution would be a 3 tier system:
1 120-240gig SSD boot/work drive;
the 2 disks above in RAID0 again for working storage;
1-2 2TB backup/multimedia/streaming drives;
Fairly affordable.

What's the point of using RAID 0 for storage drives? RAID 0 (striping) is used for performance gains, not for redundancy.

 

[martixy]

If you got a better idea I'm all ears(or eyes in this case).
Because I'm really at a loss of how I can use RAID0 for something that isn't storage?
Maybe I should put my RAM in RAID0, that would be cool...

 

[bigboxes]

If you got a better idea I'm all ears(or eyes in this case).
Because I'm really at a loss of how I can use RAID0 for something that isn't storage?
Maybe I should put my RAM in RAID0, that would be cool...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you want to do. Let's look at your original dream setup again:

My ideal storage solution would be a 3 tier system:
1 120-240gig SSD boot/work drive;
the 2 disks above in RAID0 again for working storage;
1-2 2TB backup/multimedia/streaming drives;
Fairly affordable.

You say that you want an SSD for the boot/work drive. I'm assuming that means your OS and programs. Next you want to RAID 0 two drives for "working" storage. Are you going to use them for photoshop or video encoding? That's the only application I might RAID a pair of drives for.

 

[martixy]

I may want to do this, doesn't mean it's going to happen however. It is as you put it only a "dream setup" at this point.

And if I did undertake building that setup, what do you expect me to do with those 2 drives I already have? Throw them away? Not use them? Just make them in a JBOD? What would be the point in any of these? In the above scenario, what sensible setup is there that doesn't involve those drives in RAID0?

 

[bigboxes]

It just depends on what you want to do. Some that build machines to do some serious photoshop (and such) desire the high IO to load up large files quicker. Outside of that it serves little purpose to put drives in RAID 0 outside of the OS drive (and even then there's really not much of a need). With SSD drives blowing away traditional RAID HDD setups there is little reason to do so. Yeah, I know there are some on here that do so, but the measurable difference is negligible. I would just ask myself "why" I would want to do this. Your reason for doing so should be of high importance to the added risk of lost data. JMO

 

[martixy]

Are you sure we understand each other well?
I have them.

I am writing this very post from an OS running on a RAID0 with those same drives you so persistently refuse to see the purpose in RAID-ing.

Imagine you have those same 2 drives. Now imagine you upgrade that with an SSD and a big backup drive. What in the world would you do with those drives you previously owned that's better other than a RAID0(for a home system)?

 

[bigboxes]

It's is YOU that doesn't understand. You don't need to RAID your storage drives. Those old drives are not the OS drive any longer. Hence, why do you want to RAID them? It makes no sense. What's the purpose? Can you hear me? Is it just because I RAIDed them before? You really need a good reason. So far I see none. It's like you really don't understand the reason for RAID. As dac7nco said, there is little reason for consumers to use RAID. I don't know how else to say this for you to understand. I don't think you know why you want to RAID them. From what I can decipher, it's because you RAIDed them before. Is that correct?