[Kaze Enji]

Hello again everyone,

I'm in a game design/development major for my college and I'm planning on getting a notebook with 3 HDD's in it. the company i'm buying from, pro-star, offers 3 different RAID configs; 0, 1, and 5.

I was wondering what'd be the best RAID to get, if at all. I was thinking at first I'd do RAID 5 with 3x 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 300's to get the speed boost RAID 0 offers but also the fault tolerance of RAID 1, but i started reading more up on RAID 5 and I heard talk of a rather large amount of overhead associated with RAID 5 and that it wouldn't be good for videogame design and gameplay.

so another thought occured to me, maybe RAID 0 the first two which would be 2x 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA 300s for the speed boost. that'd be where i'd save all my game related stuff such as levels and editors and actual games i play, and then use the third HDD which would be a 500 GB 5400 RPM SATA 300 for my OS and all other files. maybe partition the third drive between OS and all other files.

The RAID 0 option has a problem with it though. I was hopeing for a backup and recovery drive within the computer but it's ok if i don't have one because i can get a 1TB external HDD for that if i have to.

thanks for the help ^^

[Carbon]

RAID 0 has little performance boost and for the risks are not worth it even if you have a external backup.

As for the other two, RAID isn't a backup, it's redundancy: I'd do RAID 1 on two of the primary disks and make sure to keep regular backups.

[thingie2]

Yea, as Carbon said, the performance increase is minimal, and I think you need 4 identical disks for RAID 5, as it has 2 sets in RAID 0, with the two RAID 0 configs in RAID 1.

[Kaze Enji]

Pro Star says that they can do RAID 5 with only 3 HDD's.

In any case it sounds like RAID 5 is out anyways. I do have a different question though real quick, i thought that RAID 1 allowed for a duplicate HDD which would mean that if one of the HDD's failed you could just switch to the other drive and wouldn't have to worry about loseing data. from your repsonse it sounds like i'm mistaken, could you please elaborate on what RAID actually does?

so, back to the matter at hand, you guys say i should have 2x 320GB in RAID 1 and then the 500GB as a standalone with the OS? or should i not even worry about RAID since i'll be able to have an external backup?

thanks for all your help

[thingie2]

I wouldn't bother with RAID, it's just something else to go wrong, and if you want back ups, you can do with manually to another drive, or even get a freeware program to do it for you.

[Carbon]

With RAID 1 if you get a virus on one disk you'll get it on the other. If data is FUBARed on one disk, it will be on the other. It's great for if a physical drive fails but it's not a backup and you'll need a replacement disk of the same size and preferably batch to repair the array.

If you work with a lot of data it's probably not a good idea because you'll run out of HDD space quick. If you don't, it's not as if the other drives are going to be worth it anyway, so you might as well do RAID 1.

[thingie2]

If you are sure you definatly need a good backup, the best way is to get a tape backup system, but they are expensive, and you shouldn't need anything that though.

[serverguy]

Originally Posted by thingie2

If you are sure you definatly need a good backup, the best way is to get a tape backup system, but they are expensive, and you shouldn't need anything that though.

I totally disagree.

Hard drives are so cheap these days I think it is better just to buy a bunch of them, copy data to them, and put them in a dark sealed box.

Much easier, much cheaper and arguably less to go wrong.

Many businesses with multiple servers, SANs etc have gone over to disk based backups instead of tapes. Its just so much easier.

I'm not saying that tape backup is dead, and it does still continue to evolve, I read somewhere that they think they will have 25TB tape cartridges by 2010. But I think that disk technology and backup solutions is evolving faster.