Thank the Gods for RAID

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Fergal1982, May 28, 2007.

  1. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    Get a call from my other half today that a warning has appeared on my (new) PC regarding a disk failure.

    Checking the RAID indicates that one of the drives has failed, and trying to rebuild the array using that disk also fails.

    Luckily, because I went with RAID 3, I am still able to function, and can now go back to the supplier to obtain a replacement for the failed drive.

    Now, whilst theres little on this machine I would die if lost, I have quite a lot of documents/pictures, and a couple of VB.Net projects I would miss.

    As the title says, Thanks the Gods for RAID!
     
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  2. nugget
    Honorary Member

    nugget Junior toady

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    Way to go Fergal. Good to see someone putting what they learn into practice. :thumbleft
     
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  3. nXPLOSi

    nXPLOSi Terabyte Poster

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    RAID has saved my bacon a couple of times as well, it really is handy!
     
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  4. ManicMonkey

    ManicMonkey Kilobyte Poster

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    im thinking that raid will have to be included in my next home comp build :) been using single drive multi partitions for too long now (that and several externals :S). Kinda think im pushing my luck storing all m data, software and films on a single disc lol
     
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  5. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    this is the first time ive ever used RAID. several people told me to just use striped (1?), but i went with RAID3 in the end (the card wont support 5). Im really glad I did. Like I said, i dont have anything that would end my world for losing, but it would still sting.

    Having lived through this failure, I will, in all honesty, never run a system without RAID again. not for my own personal use at any rate.

    I also need, at some point, to implement some sort of backup system. Most likely just to an external HDD.
     
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  6. ManicMonkey

    ManicMonkey Kilobyte Poster

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    as far as im aware isnt it only servers that support raid 5? normal xp / vista boxes wont run it.
     
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  7. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    I don't think this is true if you use a 'proper' hardware RAID adaptor. The adaptor presents what appears to be a big hard disk to the OS, so no special drivers are required.

    Harry.
     
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  8. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    on the software raid setups, yes i believe you are correct. But not on the hardware side.

    I use a PCI RAID controller. They can handle anything they are set up to, and it doesnt interact with the OS at all to determine capabilities. If the card handles RAID 5, then you can have raid 5. In all cases, the controller makes the OS think its just a single drive.

    To be honest I would never use a software RAID setup, since it uses resources and would slow things down. So for a RAID solution I would recommend either: using the controller built into the MOBO (tends to be 0 & 1 unless you buy a high end MOBO which has a 5 controller), or buy a PCI (or PCI Express? not sure if there are any yet) RAID controller.
     
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  9. ManicMonkey

    ManicMonkey Kilobyte Poster

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    if your using a hardware raid controller and somit insane like say.. raptor 10000 rpm discs, would the raid controller slow them down? or can it handle access speed like that (not sure if its bothered - not done much raiding tbh)
     
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  10. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    A good hardware RAID controller will handle multiple high-speed disks with *no* problem. They tend to have the property of emptying your wallet though. :p

    Harry.
     
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  11. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    Any RAID controller will handle pretty much any sized drive you put into it, but higher end cards will handle things better. All the controller does is split/copy the data according to the RAID array setup, and pass each drive the data it needs to copy to itself.

    As far as the speed of the drives is concerned, it wont care really. But the controller would become the bottleneck (as is almost always the case) with the data transfer. The disks can retrieve and write the data as fast as the like, but the controller will only pass the data through when its ready to. Again, higher end models will do this better.
     
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  12. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    dammit Harry. are you waiting until i start posting???? :lol:
     
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  13. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    <giggle>
     
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