carl0s Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 All of their better spec'd Dimension machines are coming with RAID-0 striped disks, meaning there's a much higher chance of losing all your data. For some reason they think this is called "failsafe storage" hmm Could do with ordering a couple as well but I can't be arsed with the sales-types they employ. http://www2.css-networks.com/stripe.jpg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamc Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 how will striping lose all your data? it will be striped across multipl discs? should be quicker as well. maybe "failsafe" is not the best word though... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheekymonkey Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 striping is quicker, but you're right. Lose one disk, and lose the lot! So chance of failure is doubled. If it's like buying a server though, you get to choose your RAID strategy when you order, so can choose Mirroring if you like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamc Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 raid5 is probably the best compromise for home use.... cost/space, etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pabs Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 yeh, but raid5 requires 3 discs, does it not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamc Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 minimum 3, quick for reading, not so quick for writing, due to multiple disc writes for a single write. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pabs Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 that's what i was getting at, yes. Sorry - i thought these PC's only came with 2.... hence not able to do raid5.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 For what purpose does a home user ever require raid?? raid is a marketing gimmick these days. The current SATA drives are quick enough/big enough not to warrant using striping. If a home user is paranoid about their data then raid 1 (mirror) yes, but striping isn't going to show its usefulness to a home user. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guigsy Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 i saw a 500 gig sata drive for 70 quid he other day... whats the point in raid when u have that. saying that i have raid 0 in my pc with 2x60 and its never gone wrong Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamc Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 that's what i was getting at, yes. Sorry - i thought these PC's only came with 2.... hence not able to do raid5.. yeh sorry, was going beyond what this pc was. For what purpose does a home user ever require raid?? raid is a marketing gimmick these days. The current SATA drives are quick enough/big enough not to warrant using striping. If a home user is paranoid about their data then raid 1 (mirror) yes, but striping isn't going to show its usefulness to a home user. for home user I completely agree, cheaper and easier to either mirror or just back stuff up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 I do remember reading a few articles on the 'net and seeing most benchmarks on the home user RAID cards and onboard RAID configurations, and in most tests they are slower/on par or at best marginally quicker. Striping is never worth the risk (and why do people need 500GB+ in a single volume), you can cross mount on windows now anyway. A single stupidly large volume is slower to check, slower to index, more likely to corrupt and generally a pain in the arse on rebuilds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbeh Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 I have raid on my PC here at home.. reading from 2 x 15000rpm SATA disks is better than 1. Its great for loading big games like Battlefield and other applications that require lots of disk access. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TT-DEK Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 Carlos!!, You going Mascrat?. I still have your springs and stuff?? You owe me £400 in storage fees,:D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 I use a raid 0 boot drive to run games and the a raid 1 (mirror) for data (music/docs/mail) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith C Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 reading from 2 x 15000rpm SATA disks is better than 1. 15k SATA disks? Anyway, as someone said, without a decent controller you're probably not getting the best from them - most of the benefit you saw by switching to the Raptors was due to them being, well, Raptors, not being striped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbeh Posted July 8, 2007 Share Posted July 8, 2007 Keith, WD Raptors. Trust me, having 2 makes them work better, I've noticed the difference in load times of game maps. Sure its not gonna be up there with the propper server based systems but it does the job Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted July 9, 2007 Author Share Posted July 9, 2007 striping is quicker, but you're right. Lose one disk, and lose the lot! So chance of failure is doubled. If it's like buying a server though, you get to choose your RAID strategy when you order, so can choose Mirroring if you like. Nope. You can't. They come configured as RAID0 and there's no option to change it. So it'd be a complete re-install when the machine arrived. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted July 9, 2007 Author Share Posted July 9, 2007 Keith, WD Raptors. Trust me, having 2 makes them work better, I've noticed the difference in load times of game maps. Sure its not gonna be up there with the propper server based systems but it does the job I didn't think comsumer-level drives had got beyond 10,000rpm yet, and that's the Raptors. Have they bought out some new ones? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted July 9, 2007 Author Share Posted July 9, 2007 Carlos!!, You going Mascrat?. I still have your springs and stuff?? You owe me £400 in storage fees,:D When is it? Yes I want them I tried to ring last week, or was it the week before (or was it the week before?) in the daytime.. I could come and get them from Trafford park, I'm only up the road When did you change your name? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbeh Posted July 9, 2007 Share Posted July 9, 2007 Oh, yeah, sorry I was talking balls Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted July 9, 2007 Author Share Posted July 9, 2007 LOL I have a 15,000rpm U320 SCSI drive as my boot/programs drive on my computer at my mums, and.. to be honest, erm, it's noisey, it needs an SCA -> 68pin adapter, the controller disables write-back cache on every reboot, and erm, it's only 74gb. I think I posted a benchmark when I was trying to sell another one of the cards on here, and it managed something like 74mb/sec which I was quite impressed with but I really don't see much benefit. I'm absolutely sick of drives failing though, and I like watching the activity lights flicker in a RAID5 array, so I bought a Dell Perc5i SAS/SATA card w/8 channels & 256mb of DDR2 memory on board, PCI-E x8, but I can't find any motherboards with usable PCI-E x8 slots in them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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