[cok3]

Could someone pls explain what RAID exactly is (Raid 0, 1, everything)? Does it make my hardisks run faster, does it make the capacity bigger? I just bought me another 120gb hardisk. I currently have 1 Western Digital 120gb and a Seagate Barracuda 120gb, both are SATA. Do the advantages of setting up raid outweight the disadvantages? How do i set it up?

[Strawberrysauce]

Google is great \/ \/ \/

I also wouldn't reccommend setting up a Raid 0 array unless you donig some pretty intensive stuff like video editing etc and if you do make sure you have a way of backing up your files as with raid 0 the computer effectively sees the two drives as one and if a drive fails it is very difficult to recover data.




---------------------------------------------


# The different RAID levels


RAID-0

RAID Level 0 is not redundant, hence does not truly fit the "RAID" acronym. In level 0, data is split across drives, resulting in higher data throughput. Since no redundant information is stored, performance is very good, but the failure of any disk in the array results in data loss. This level is commonly referred to as striping.


RAID-1

RAID Level 1 provides redundancy by writing all data to two or more drives. The performance of a level 1 array tends to be faster on reads and slower on writes compared to a single drive, but if either drive fails, no data is lost. This is a good entry-level redundant system, since only two drives are required; however, since one drive is used to store a duplicate of the data, the cost per megabyte is high. This level is commonly referred to as mirroring.


RAID-2

RAID Level 2, which uses Hamming error correction codes, is intended for use with drives which do not have built-in error detection. All SCSI drives support built-in error detection, so this level is of little use when using SCSI drives.


RAID-3

RAID Level 3 stripes data at a byte level across several drives, with parity stored on one drive. It is otherwise similar to level 4. Byte-level striping requires hardware support for efficient use.


RAID-4

RAID Level 4 stripes data at a block level across several drives, with parity stored on one drive. The parity information allows recovery from the failure of any single drive. The performance of a level 4 array is very good for reads (the same as level 0). Writes, however, require that parity data be updated each time. This slows small random writes, in particular, though large writes or sequential writes are fairly fast. Because only one drive in the array stores redundant data, the cost per megabyte of a level 4 array can be fairly low.


RAID-5

RAID Level 5 is similar to level 4, but distributes parity among the drives. This can speed small writes in multiprocessing systems, since the parity disk does not become a bottleneck. Because parity data must be skipped on each drive during reads, however, the performance for reads tends to be considerably lower than a level 4 array. The cost per megabyte is the same as for level 4.


Summary:

* RAID-0 is the fastest and most efficient array type but offers no fault-tolerance.

* RAID-1 is the array of choice for performance-critical, fault-tolerant environments. In addition, RAID-1 is the only choice for fault-tolerance if no more than two drives are desired.

* RAID-2 is seldom used today since ECC is embedded in almost all modern disk drives.

* RAID-3 can be used in data intensive or single-user environments which access long sequential records to speed up data transfer. However, RAID-3 does not allow multiple I/O operations to be overlapped and requires synchronized-spindle drives in order to avoid performance degradation with short records.

* RAID-4 offers no advantages over RAID-5 and does not support multiple simultaneous write operations.

* RAID-5 is the best choice in multi-user environments which are not write performance sensitive. However, at least three, and more typically five drives are required for RAID-5 arrays.
[/b]

[cheney]

RAID 50 is rarely used. Level 50 is the same thing as level 5 but with mirroring for data redundancy. So basicly level 50 is the same thing as level 5, but requires double the number of disks in the array. The cost per megabyte in level 50 is incredibly high, but it is also the most secure and fastest raid method.
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[cok3]

whoa, this stuff is very difficult to understand.

Basically the main programs i use are Lightwave 8, Photoshop, and Painter. I also do a little Premiere and After effects. So what i want to ask is, are any of the raid setups for my system? or should i leave the HD's running as they are. In what cases are Raid setups handy (in plain english plz) ? thz for the replies so far.

[Strawberrysauce]

well since you have two hard drives your main choices are RAID 0 and RAID 1

RAID 0 = your two hard drives are combined together to act as one, youll only see one HD in windows, and the data is spread across the two drives. I think it will give you about a 80- 90% increase (?) in your harddrive access speed. But this will only really be noticeable if your doing really crazy stuff like exporting a movie from premiere, defraging your harddrive, working in Photoshop and burning a DVD all at the same time If one drive fails you will lose all your data.

RAID 1 = One drive is basically an exact copy of the other. You have two 120gb hard drives, if you use raid 1 you will still only have 120gb in total, as the second drive will just be used as a backup.


In both cases you will need to reinstall windows i think., do a few google searches..

Ive got 2 120gb maxtor drives, and considered doing a raid 0 setup but decided it probably wouldn't be worth it.

hope that helped

[B0b]

i use RAID 0 on my PATA drives and gained a speed increase with opening files in PS, and the Scratch partition is faster

i do a little unprofessional video editing with the footage i've taken of the kids etc, so it also helps with this..

i back up work regularly onto another HDD, and then when finished make 2 copies onto either CD or DVD depending on Job Size..

it's kinda like using a Dual CPU, once you've used it you'll never go back to single

[cheney]

[cok3]

so it would be better if i had another hardisk for backup jsut incase then right? Exactly how often do the hardrive fails happen? I'm really scared of loosin my data... and one last question, is it ok if the brands of the hardisks are different? I've heard about ram running more optimized if they are the same type ad brand, so i'm wondering if this applies to hardisks.

[cheney]

I strongly suggest using more than 1 disk volume. If you are limited to 1 single physical hard drive than create two partitions on it. I do recommend using 2 physical hard drives, but if this is not an option then please do the previous.

The reasoning for this is security. There are all kinds of software threats that exist. Your entire harddrive can be washed by an evil virus, or you could accidentally destroy your file system, or OS configuration. There are so many unthinkable things that can happen.

On the primary disk volume I recommend installing all your software. Everything that can possibly be executed must be here. All your saved data should be on your second volume. By saved data I mean all your PSD files, JPGs, MP3s, DIVX, and all that other crap you might want to hold on to. This leaves you free to format your software at any moment without loosing your data. The benefit to having two physical harddrives is that your data will still be there if your primary hard disk physically crashes.

I also recommend backing up your data atleast twice a year onto cd or dvd. If you are running a business than you need to back up your data atleast monthly.
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[stacy]

Hard Drives are now sporting LOONG time between
breakdown rates these days.

I remember when a 10% bad sector rate was normal in MFM
and RLL hard drives. Part of installing a drive was
to run a utility and mark the bad sectors before using
it with the OS.
And I had to 'park' the heads when I shut the company
machines down. But not any more.

The warrantees are three to five years now.
But... of course it will depend on how hard you work
them. If you're running a render farm 24/7 and
jumping right from one project to the next, I'd
say that Mean Time Between Breakdown number
will shrink.

The drives should be identical.
There are differences between drives of different brands
that outwardly have the same specs.
For instance, a 120GB 8MB cache 7,200RPM
Seagate might return data at 8.5ms
and a 120GB 8MB cache 7,200RPM Western
Digital might return data at 8.9ms.

The number of heads and sector sizes and so forth
can be different too, but they both arrive at the
same 120GB capacity.

[cok3]

I'm so sorry if i'm not getting some of u, i'm really a noob at this HD stuff

So cheney are u suggesting that I use Raid at all or not? Is it possible to run raid 0 on partitions rather than whole hard disks? Run raid 0 on two of my partitions on a HD?, and leave the rest as they are?

Thx for teh advice on how to organize my data. I'm currently using one of my HD's entirely for storage(downloads and docs), and for the other HD I've partitioned 30gb for my system and software, the rest is for the recently downloaded stuff.

Stacy, so are u saying that its not possible to run raid 0 on my 2 HDs? If not the shop should have no problem switching another HD for me i hope... considering I bought the Western D. because one of the shopkeepers told me it wasn't necessary to have identical drives...

[stacy]

I suppose it's possible to find drives from different manufactures
that are engineered exactly the same. The shopkeeper needs to
look at the spec sheets for the drives, side by side.
There are a number of small internal differences.

I've built two dual Xeon boxes with e7505 chipsets on
SuperMicro boards, that run NewTek VideoToasters.
One is an SATA array of Raptors the other is Seagate SCSIs.
I could find a 7,200RPM SATA the same size as the Raptors and
add it to the array, but I'm SURE it would drag the other drives
down, ...no doubt what-so-ever !!!

In ALL of the research and mountains of advice I got from some
extremely good technicians, NO one at ANY time EVER
suggested to run off-brand drives in a single array.
...NO ONE, NEVER.

Why dance around the issue and keep asking the same basic
question over and over and over?

Just get IDENTICAL drives from the SAME company and forget
about whether they will or won't work together. They WILL (period)
That's not hard to understand.

Do this: Use ONE of your off-brand drives for the Operating
System and Apps.

THEN, get another drive that's identical to the one that's left and
stripe them as your work/scratch/data drive.

If you're doing video and need the speed, stripe them in RAID-0.

If your doing lots of graphics and need the back-up more, stripe
them in a RAID-1 mirror.

The Operating System drive can be different than the two in the
array... ...but the two in the array should be identical.

[jfrancis]

If I want to edit video on my PC, do I really need the speed of RAID-0?

What kind of apps really need that kind of speed?

[stacy]

NONE of them need it....

They'll all do background rendering.
Even the VideoToaster will run on a
basic one drive setup.
NOTE: They all have absolute minimum
drive requirements. Like Pinnacle Liquid for
instance requires, as I remember, at least
about 20MBps sustained. A good 7,200RPM
Seagate or Western Digital with an 8MB cache
on a good motherboard will get you that.

The apps don't need it, YOU do.

If you don't want to take a coffee break
everytime you add a transition or effect,
or, want to scrub the timeline with
effects in place and not wait forever
for a bunch of little renders.

VegasVideo5, Avid, Pinnacle Liquid 6, PremierePro,
Canopus, the VideoToaster ALL run better
the faster the hardware is.

A simple 2 or 3 drive RAID-0 is minimum for
a realistic video/graphics box that won't eat up all
your work time.

SPEED = PROFIT.

[Ragnarok]

Is there any advantage in having just one HD using Raid or the plain old IDE?
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Seigetsu

[cok3]

I second Ragnarok's question. is it even possible to have one HD running raid 0?

[jfrancis]

I'm pretty sure if you go to Dell's site and configure a workstation, it won't even let you take the RAID-0 option with only one HD. I assume that's a general rule - the whole point is redundancy over more than one drive, yes?

[stacy]

Nope... As far as I know, an 'array' by definition means 2 or more.

The speed increase happens when, as SHAMHEAD states, "...data is
split across drives, resulting in higher data throughput."

You can stripe SATA, PATA, or SCSI.
Sure, PATA IDE drives can be striped just like SATA.

Go back and read SHAMHEADS nice description of RAID 0.

If you're actually going to do this, there's
one little trick you should know about striping
for VIDEO USE. Never use hardware RAID.
Always use the software RAID. That's because
hardware RAIDs do a 'bursting' technique.

It will play havoc with video reads and writes.
Video arrays should be as fast as possible but
also as smooth as possible.

[jfrancis]

What is the purpose of hardware raid, then? I see references to "bursting" on the Dell site. If it's not good for video, what is it good for?

[stacy]

Redundancy or speed. OR... redundancy AND speed.

Go back and read SHAMHEAD's descriptions.

For most Mother Boards with built-in RAIDs,
you're limited to '0' or '1'.

If you're doing Video work, use RAID-0
If you're doing Print or Web graphics, use RAID-1

0 is just for speed, and
1 is a mirror back-up with a small speed increase.


Cok3, I see you use NewTek LightWave. If you hang
around the NewTek user's forum, then you know
that LW can benefit from a RAID-0. You also can see
that the setup of choice for NewTek Toaster users is
a large single drive for OS and Apps, and also storing
work files, and then an array of SATAs or SCSIs. Some
people use a smaller drive for OS and Apps, and then
one more drive for Back-up an storage from the RAID-0.

If you use RAID-0 just remember to back-up finished or
important files to your large system drive, or another
large drive. A RAID-0 drive is mainly for work files.

RE: "BURSTING" ...For instance, it's good for a big company
server with a giant data base that's being hit by dozens,
or maybe hundreds of people all at the same time. They
can be sent packets of info from the server, just, bam, bam,
bam...one right after the other... You don't want to use it for
a sustained uninterupted stream of video.

P.S., forget DELL. If you want to learn about RAIDs
for Video and Graphics work, go to www.newtek.com and
then to 'community' -- 'Discussion Forum' -- then down
to 'VT -Hardware' and hang out there for awhile and ask
questions about RAIDs for Video and LightWave'.

[jfrancis]

Is SATA sufficient? Or is SCSI needed for video editing?

Is 7200 rpm sufficient? 10,000? 15,000?

Is a highend machine from Boxx or Alienware money well-spent? Or can you recommend another brand? Or should I build it (or hire someone to build it) -- I want to run Maya on it and have decent backend batch rendering speed as well.

Any opinions?

[stacy]

I can only speak from experience with the VideoToaster and VegasVideo5.
Of course SCSI is always better.
But, to answer your question, SATA is certainly sufficient.
If you get an SATA motherboard get one that allows you to
stripe more than 2 drives in an array. You might want to start
with 2, but you'll be able to expand.

For VegasVideo5, 2 or 3 stripped 7,200 is good.
But, as usual, 10k is better.
My personal favorites are 10k WD Raptors.

If you can do 4 layers of uncompressed and/or live switching
in the Toaster with 6 7,200 160GB sata's in RAID-0 with a
dual Xeon e7505 chipset motherboard from SuperMicro,
you can definately run VegasVideo, Avid or Premiere Pro on it.
No sweat.

If you're using

VegasVideo5,
PremierePro,
Pinnacle Liquid 6,
Avid,
or Ulead Studio,
a good place to start would be a fast P4 Prescott core on
an aBit or Asus motherboard with a single 160GB UATA 133
drive for OS and apps,
and just two 36.7GB or 74GB SATA raptors for the video work drive.

That would be a seriously fine video box for any NLE or LightWave.
I've never used Maya but I suspect this would also be an extremely
good system for it too.

A good single 160GB or larger 7,200 Seagate or WD is the
minimum to do decent editing at useable resolutions.

I still recommend you register and use the NewTek user forum
for first class video information.
Hang out in the VT-Hardware threads.
Talk with guys named:

-DJ Lithium
-Eugene Kosarovich
-Jim Capillo
-Ted Ruiz
-Bob Tasa

Since it's the NewTek board they talk mainly about the
Toaster and LightWave, but if you use the Personal
Message function they will discuss just about any video
system. Especiall Eugene and DJ.

They're some of the best video guys in the country.
From Vancouver, BC to NYC.

[jfrancis]

Very much appreciated; thanks!

I'm also wondering about

AMD vs Intel - it seems like AMD is doing well lately - better than Intel in a lot of comparisons

Intel now vs Intel in Q4-2004 or Q1-2005 - new FSB speed and cache sizes right around the corner - worth waiting?

Good openGL graphics cards being not so great for video - and vice versa - ? Someone was telling me recently they bought a very expensive Wildcat Realizm 200 and it was great for Maya, but it was giving them weird video problems

[B0b]

intel Xeon are currently the best available for Photoshop (benchmerk filter tests anyhow) but they only just out perform Opterons in CS only -- in 7.01 Opterons kick intel stupid.. and with 64Bit Windows on the horizon (spring 2005, yeah we'll see that when it happens), i'm sure Adobe will be developing a 64bit Photoshop to take advantage of the amount of RAM available to 64bit PC's (breaking the 2GB barrier)

of course AMD64 have the advantage of being 32 and 64bit compatable

INTEL only have a 64bit CPU and that isn't selling so well..

AMD are of course going to beat Intel to the post on Dual Core CPU's as well they recon next year for the CPUs and Intel say '06, i for 1 can't wait for a dual core laptop

i have a 3DLabs Wildcat VP870 and don't have any trouble with Video on it

sounds like new hardware driver problems, will probably be ironed out in the next couple of driver releases...

[stacy]

Sure but,
-DJ Lithium
-Eugene Kosarovich
-Jim Capillo
-Ted Ruiz
-Bob Tasa
Know way more than I do.
They know way more than most
people come to think of it!

NewTek just built an experimental super box
using Athlon 64 chips.

http://digitalvideoediting.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=27324

They just announced on the forum they are
officially recommending it as a processor of choice
along with the Xeons.

The first guy on the list, DJ has built several
dual AMD boxes for clients on the Tyan Thunder SK8
motherboard. (Keep in mind, unless your running a
VideoToaster or doing live switching, a single CPU
motherboard will work fine.) His real name is Kelly,
DJLithium is the name of his business.

And...I and 100% of the people I know use nVidia
chipset video cards.
They work first time just about every time. Very, very
few problems when building video editing systems.
I also have an ATI 8500dv that I use with a
Asus A7M266-D board for video capture on it's firewire and
Y/C 's' connectors. The Video Toaster didn't like it at all.
nVidia is all that NewTek will recommend.

To answer the other question, personally I recommend building
your own box.
You can build an ABSOLUTE bleeding edge technology box from
components bought at www.zipzoomfly.com or www.newegg.com
or from www.pricewatch.com for a third or a fourth of a brand name box.
...and probably get better components. You'll get at least
AS GOOD for FAR less.

And finally... if you DO decide not to build your own, don't buy a
brand name, have DJ Lithium (Kelly) build one for you.
You'll have the best possible system from a real hardware genius
in the video/film business.
Kelly Lee Myers at: [email protected]