1. OCAU Merchandise is available! Check out our 20th Anniversary Mugs, Classic Logo Shirts and much more! Discussion in this thread.
    Dismiss Notice

780i RAID 5 Vs 0+1

Discussion in 'Storage & Backup' started by stuii, Aug 26, 2008.

  1. stuii

    stuii Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2007
    Messages:
    1,489
    Location:
    Templestowe
    Hi Guys,

    I'm trying to toss up between what to do for RADI on my 780i SLI board.

    Can anyone please post your experiences with raid 5 and raid 0+1 on this board? maybe a HD tach and the details of what drives you're running?

    I'm trying to decide what my best option is for a games/file storage machine is.
     
  2. OP
    OP
    stuii

    stuii Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2007
    Messages:
    1,489
    Location:
    Templestowe
    no-one knows this info??
     
  3. Embercide

    Embercide Member

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2002
    Messages:
    1,822
    Location:
    Brisbane
    How many drives in the raid?
     
  4. OP
    OP
    stuii

    stuii Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2007
    Messages:
    1,489
    Location:
    Templestowe
    for the raid 5 I am tossing up between 3 and 5
    for 0+1 I would use 4 drives
     
  5. orchidophile

    orchidophile Member

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2008
    Messages:
    622
    Location:
    Under melaleuca unciata
    I too would be very interested in this, as I have a 780i running a raid0 at the moment but want the recovery and redundancy that 5 and 0+1 would offer....

    Any tips?
     
  6. OP
    OP
    stuii

    stuii Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2007
    Messages:
    1,489
    Location:
    Templestowe
    orchid - can you run a HDD benchmark? what drives are you running?

    from what I have read, there *should* be minimal change to your throughput if you go to 0+1 but you'll have redundancy (it's a bit expensive $/GB compared to R5 tho)

    What drives are you running also?
     
  7. feistl

    feistl Member

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2006
    Messages:
    496
    IMO RAID5 should only be attempted with a hardware raid card (which start at $400 for 8 ports).

    It is also possible to use linux for software raid.... but id only recommend to linux gurus.
     
  8. orchidophile

    orchidophile Member

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2008
    Messages:
    622
    Location:
    Under melaleuca unciata
    NW, can run the tach results when I get home (providing power has been restored... !@#%! western power) @^*#@

    2x 640gb HD642JJ Samsung 334gb platters x2

    Thought I could add a third to get raid5 but love the performance increase from raid0. Want to get a bit more recovery/redundancy though. I also have a 250gb Samsung (will get another soon I think) as a backup drive. How many more of these drives would I need for 0+1? 2?
     
  9. ice_cool

    ice_cool Member

    Joined:
    Nov 9, 2005
    Messages:
    2,849
    Location:
    Sydney
    Definitely not raid 5, the fake raid on these mobos would drain a lot of system resources.
     
  10. orchidophile

    orchidophile Member

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2008
    Messages:
    622
    Location:
    Under melaleuca unciata
    Like how much? Percentage wise? What's the difference in cpu overhead on the fakeraid onboard between 0, 0+1 and 5? :confused: I know 5 will take up more as it's constantly writing parity? (is that right? I'm new to this) but would that really be enough effort for the cpu to significantly slow it down?

    Here's my HDtune results. I have a feeling they're nowhere near where they should be, perhaps someone here could let me know if they're in the ballpark or waaaay out.

    [​IMG]

    (sorry for the hijack *looks sheepish* )
     
  11. Kaine[zof]

    Kaine[zof] Member

    Joined:
    Mar 22, 2004
    Messages:
    2,179
    Location:
    Melbourne
    I'd take RAID 5 over 0+1 for a home system that doesn't need hot-swap. Also don't expect any real performance out of on-chip motherboard RAID, they are only software. You need a dedicated RAID controller or at least a proper on-board chip (like on the Gigabyte DS3R boards) where you configure it in bios to get the proper performance benefits.

    RAID 5 will give you a fast read rate but write speeds won't be that quick. You don't have true redundancy but you do have parity which is the next best thing, you can at least rebuild any one drive that has gone tits up. You can also do it with 3 disks. Cool part is, the more disks you put in it the more efficient it is (most GB/$). The overhead on CPU is a bit of a pain and is what affects the write speeds but it won't bother a decent CPU- provided you're using a proper RAID controller. Running software/on-NB RAID is much worse and I wouldn't recommend anyone bothering.

    Considering going this route in the future, grabbing 3 or 4 1tb disks and a DS3-R or a decent RAID card.
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2008
  12. oohms

    oohms Member

    Joined:
    Dec 22, 2005
    Messages:
    2,192
    Location:
    Melbourne 3015
    the ds3r still uses software raid 5 :p
     
  13. OP
    OP
    stuii

    stuii Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2007
    Messages:
    1,489
    Location:
    Templestowe
    well I'm planning to run software raid 5 on the system in my sig - @3.6GHz, surely it would be fine on that system? :eek:

    at a bare minimum question - if I did a 5 drive raid 5 softwaer array on my comp, would I be able to write at the same speed or greater than 1 standard drive? and what would be the same quesiton but for read?

    that's what will really influence my decision
     
  14. ni9ht_5ta1k3r

    ni9ht_5ta1k3r Member

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2006
    Messages:
    35,690
    Location:
    Sydney
    I'd go raid 5 but not for the OS.
     
  15. terrastrife

    terrastrife Member

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2006
    Messages:
    18,817
    Location:
    ADL/SA The Monopoly State
    the more drives you have in fakeraid5 the slower it will be for reading and writing small files...which is exactly what you will be doing by putting windows and games onit :)

    so really you go from slower than one drive, to even slower...and slower, and slower... as cpu usage goes up and up and up...

    0+1 for fakeraid, or just plain old AIDs (raid 0)
     
  16. feistl

    feistl Member

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2006
    Messages:
    496
    The CPU speed itself is really the problem with software raid... speeds will still be slow.

    For write... i have seen speeds as low as 15MB/s write using software raid. I have a proper hardware raid card and i only get 80MB/s across 8 drives (although around 200MB/s over 4 drives as there is less overhead).

    So with 5 drives in software raid5, well dont expect big speeds. I would honestly be surprised if you got over 50MB/s although it all depends on the motherboard/OS/drives.

    Linux software seems to be quicker than motherboard/windows, im not sure why.

    Honestly, excluding the speed issue completly... id still recommend a hardware solution. About 2 years ago i setup a 2TB software raid5 (8x320gb). Speeds were slow, rebuilds were painful and i ended up losing my data. The time and effort i put into it was extreme... yet the results were disappointing.

    I then purchased a Highpoint 2320 ($420 at the time) and created the array. Speeds are good (80MB/s write over 8 drives, 600MB/s+ read) and so far ive had 15,000 hours uptime (2 years non stop) without a single failure/issue.

    Honestly, it was the best money ive ever spent. It shows as well, as they still sell for like $380 new... so only dropped $40 in 2 years with no changes....

    If you have the money, invest in a raid card. It will save you many hours of pain... Plus its nice that when you upgrade you simply plug the card into your new machine and away you go. Cant do that with software raid. Also, software raid will drop the array if you plug the drives into the wrong port (EG HDD1 into port2 etc) after building the array... so maintenance can be dangerous).

    That all said.... i havnt used the new chipset raid so i cant really say but put it this way... A $300 motherboard is not going to be anywhere near as a good as a $400 dedicated raid card, obviously.

    Good luck either way. Remember, once you build your array (software or hardware) before you put data on try breaking the array, rebuilding... expanding etc etc etc. Just so you know how to use it when there is no data at risk.

    (Actually thats another thing, hardware cards let you expand the array size, software wont. Rebuild times on software for me was over 8 hours... the whole time the PC was unusable. This was on a DQ6 with an E6600 @ 3.6ghz a few years back)
     
  17. OP
    OP
    stuii

    stuii Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2007
    Messages:
    1,489
    Location:
    Templestowe
    would something like this do the trick?

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401006

    or something like this?
    http://www.graysonline.com.au/lot.asp?LOT_ID=2905418

    where does one get sas cables from? could I plug regular sata 3GB/s drives into the gray's online smart controller 3200?

    Could I use these to do a raid 0 sas for OS and a 3drive raid 5 sata 2 for storage?

    Can anyone recommend me a controller from the auctions at grays that would suit my purposes? I'm happy enough to get a couple of sas drives of grays as well if it would be good to run one or two of them for OS disk... I just need some good storage as well for the file library
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2008
  18. vbrauner

    vbrauner Member

    Joined:
    Sep 17, 2008
    Messages:
    1
    Raid 5 vs Raid 10

    If you have a Raid 5:

    Highest Read data transaction rate, medium Write data transaction rate

    Low ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data disks means high efficiency



    But did you know:

    If two disks fail the raid has failed

    Most complex controller design

    Difficult to rebuild in the event of a disk failure (as compared to RAID
    level 1)

    *****

    If you have a Raid 10 :


    RAID 10 is implemented as a striped array whose segments are RAID 1 arrays

    RAID 10 has the same fault tolerance as RAID level 1

    RAID 10 has the same overhead for fault-tolerance as mirroring alone

    High I/O rates are achieved by striping RAID 1 segments

    Under certain circumstances, RAID 10 array can sustain multiple
    simultaneous drive failures

    Excellent solution for sites that would have otherwise gone with RAID 1
    but need some additional performance boost


    But did you know:

    All drives must move in parallel to proper track lowering sustained
    performance

    Very limited scalability at a very high inherent cos

    http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

    ****

    You might question these comments but all we do here is recovery from failed units... http://www.cbltech.com.au/raids.html?id=1

    So I thought I might add:

    *Questions for the reader:

    How many drives have failed? are they logical, electrical or physical
    failures. Are the drives a matched set. Do you know if the failure of
    the two drives was at the same time or has one drive failed and the
    second went out at a later date?

    Keep the order of the drives - number them before removing any drives.

    Has the Raid been reinitialised? - if not DO NOT allow a reinitialisation

    Are you able to supply the Raid controller?

    Capacity of the drives (how many GB for each drive)
    What type of drives (IDE ,SCSI, SATA)

    Block Size used? (offset of starting block)
    Details - additional RAID information


    Kind of like thinking about the flat tire when buying a new car - but the thoughts of expense if the Raid were to fail should be taken into the equation.

    If you have questions - I will do my best to respond.
     
  19. Blinky

    Blinky Member

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2001
    Messages:
    5,379
    Location:
    Brisbane
    OP is asking about 0+1 not raid 10. Which one does his chipset offer one or both?
     
  20. OP
    OP
    stuii

    stuii Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2007
    Messages:
    1,489
    Location:
    Templestowe

Share This Page

Advertisement: