Sata2 Raid 0

[sambonebs]

Anyone know if you can have 4 Drives in a RAID 0 Array? I'm just spec'ing a New Music PC and I need monster storage!

 

[sargey]

DO NOT USE RAID 0! No fault tolerance. If one disk goes down, you are fooked.

Keep the disks separate or buy a SATA raid controller and 3/4/5 disks and configure RAID 5

 

[Griff]

You can use Raid 0+1 if your motherboard supports it.

Some people may shy away from Raid 0 due to no fault tolerance but if you were running a single large HD and that failed you'd have no fault tolerance then either.

 

[KDF]

0+1 is a good compromise, but if your running 4 sata drives then I would go raid 5 tbh.

 

[sambonebs]

You can use Raid 0+1 if your motherboard supports it.

Some people may shy away from Raid 0 due to no fault tolerance but if you were running a single large HD and that failed you'd have no fault tolerance then either.

RAID 0+1: Striping and Mirroring, Correct?

I've only ever used 1 and 0, what's 5 when it's at home?

 

[sargey]

Raid 5 is striping with parity.

Every time a block is written, a parity block gets written.

Therefore if one disk goes down, you can slap another one in and re-create the data from the parity blocks.

 

[sambonebs]

Raid 5 is striping with parity.

Every time a block is written, a parity block gets written.

Therefore if one disk goes down, you can slap another one in and re-create the data from the parity blocks.

I'm running a Music PC, not a Mission Critical Server!

Seriously though, I need about 1TB of storage and just wondered if I can run RAID 0 over 4 Drives. Redundancy and Data Rebuild Capability aren't that major; every project will be saved on DVD RAM as well at the end of each session.

 

[Evil Ally]

Remember if you run 4 disks in a raid 0 config then you are 4 times more likely to lose all of your data compared to a single disk. Lose one disk, and you lose all of the data on all disks.

You can have 4 seperate disks, but use them as one volume in windows. You can mount new disks under a folder on an existing drive letter.

 

[sambonebs]

Remember if you run 4 disks in a raid 0 config then you are 4 times more likely to lose all of your data compared to a single disk. Lose one disk, and you lose all of the data on all disks.

You can have 4 seperate disks, but use them as one volume in windows. You can mount new disks under a folder on an existing drive letter.

Fo' Sho'! But then I'm not gaining the Write Speed advantage of RAID 0 am I?

 

[Evil Ally]

It's debatable if you gain much performance on the desktop from raid 0 anyway. Hard drive benchmarks often look great, but frequently real world apps don't benefit. Often it's faster to have seperate disks so you can have one source and one destination. Then you can have your source material on one and write the output to another. Of course, I can't comment on the particular app you will be using maybe it will be different.

...to awnser your original question you should be able to have 4 disks in a raid 0 array, but it will depend on the capabilities of the raid controller.

 

[sambonebs]

It's debatable if you gain much performance on the desktop from raid 0 anyway. Hard drive benchmarks often look great, but frequently real world apps don't benefit. Often it's faster to have seperate disks so you can have one source and one destination. Then you can have your source material on one and write the output to another. Of course, I can't comment on the particular app you will be using maybe it will be different.

...to awnser your original question you should be able to have 4 disks in a raid 0 array, but it will depend on the capabilities of the raid controller.

It's for Music Creation, so I'll be simultaneously Reading/Writing large amounts of data (1 minute of audio @ 44.1Khz, 16-Bit = 10MB Aprox.), so any kind of performance advantage I can gain is useful.

Thanks for the answer too! I'm checking the Specs of the board on the ASUS website site later.