RAID 0 hard drive question

Hello,

I have purchased a Dell computer with a RAID 0 hard drive and since I have never owned a RAID hard drive that I can remember, just wondering if running a defragging program like PerfectDisk is OK and Window Washer for cleaning temp files such as IE Cache, cookies, etc or if it will cause problems with the RAID 0 hard drive.

Thank you in advance,

Gracie

 

Gracie,

I own a Dell w/Raid 0 (nVidia). Basically, I treat it like a regular drive w/ the exception of checking if an app specifically will not run on it. I use Acronis, FDISR, Diskeeper, Ultimate De-Frag, CCleaner...

Waiting for StorageCraft to work out their issues w/ nVidia Raid.

I wouldn't worry about ruining my set-up, just be aware of the apps you're installing

...screamer

 

Hi everyone ,

Thank you for the information, its appreciated. The only programs I would install are like video editing programs, window washer, perfectdisk, office, nod32, spy sweeper, few instant messengers, quicken, some games and really that's all.

I just hope all that stuff runs ok on a raid 0 drive.. the kind of raid 0 drive is: 500GB Performance RAID 0 (2 x 250GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM HDDs)

Gracie

 

Thank you Pete and everyone.. appreciate the help. No problems so far

 

Just thought I'd give you an update. We (StorageCraft) just today resolved issues in the WinPE recovery environment that were preventing successful load of nForce storage controllers using the F6 boot-time option. We'd release this immediately, but I think we're going to try to get another nForce-related fix in there first, namely to have full support for all nForce platforms from the CD itself without the need to use F6 and driver floppies. It's amazing how difficult it is to get nForce device support functional under these environments. The gist is that you can now expect an update to the ShadowProtect recovery environment, in the very near term, that provides support for all nForce flavors.

 

one of the things to keep in mind with a RAID 0 (stripe) array is that it more than doubles the odds of data loss due to hardware failure. the Mean Time To Failure of each HDD + the RAID controller itself or the mobo if its integrated which it sounds like it is. It gets worse the more drives are in an array most integrated solutions are just 2 drives, but for instance 6 or even 12 HDDs could be employed with various IDE\SATA RAID cards. Loss of any single component puts the recovery past any reasonably priced option.

I lost my first RAID 0 array with the death of a mobo w\ an integrated RAID controller. I declined to replace the mobo just to recover the data. And the array would only be recognized on a different motherboard if it had an identical RAID controller on it.

Its a best practice to employ RAID 0 as transitional space, which is exactly what makes it good for video editing where there is the actual performance advantage of sequential writes and reads to the array. But for "storage" video is generally transfered to hard media. Its far less justifiable these days for your average user. The increased performance from higher areal density in drives these days is such that little real performance advantage is seen in most user patterns compared to the heightened risk. Of course it depends on what you have to loose and how religiously you backup.

Its unusual to need 500GB of "performance space" so Id gather your also employing it as "storage". Maintain those hard copies

Of course even parity arrays (RAID 5, 3, ect) arent a substitute for good backups, last year I had a bad stick of RAM corrupt most of a 200GB RAID 5 array as I moved around data on it (use checksums to verify copies then delete), the array itself is perfectly functional and synchronized, the data however is pure garbage corrupted past any hope of recovery
Luckily about 80% had hard backups.

worth a read
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.html
http://www.lostcircuits.com/hdd/hdd2/
http://www.lostcircuits.com/hdd/hdd7/
http://www.lostcircuits.com/hdd/hdd9/

as far as I know all defrag programs work on all levels (0, 1, 3, 5, ect) of RAID, cloning is generally far more problematic, the simple levels (0, 1) have the best success (Ghost for instance doesnt officially support it but often works anyway), cloning parity levels generally requires very expensive software and simple copies are a better option. The difference is that a defrag ap or your cleaner or any other application has no idea its actually running on more than one drive, whereas a HDD cloning utility has to interact with the RAID controller and multiple physical drives from outside the OS (Even cloning utilities that you instruct from inside the OS generally exit and actually perform outside on a reboot). Most any application your running from inside the operating system will be oblivious to the array and simply consider it a single disk

as grnxnm mentions above its getting the operating system that the backup\clone utility is running on after the reboot (DOS ect) to properly recognize the drivers for the RAID controller which is the trick. And while its reasonably affordable to buy a simple PCI RAID card you can migrate from computer to computer (my Promise SX6000 and its array has been in over 5 boxes in 5 years) its less likely youll have a clone utility that will work. But DVDs are cheap and moving your array can be very useful.

 

Hello,
Keep it simple.
One HDD for boot.
Second HDD for backup.
At most, install some heavy-duty software and pagefile on the other HDD to utilize them both fully, but RAID is unnecessary for most people.
Mrk

 

That's excellent!! I'm very excited about this app and I'm looking forward to trying it and adding to my arsenal of BackUp / Restore utilities. If at all possible would you start a new thread when the update is complete? This way all us nVidia Raid users will be able to give it a go.

thanks again,

...screamer