Please educate me on RAID and its value for me

[mark3000]

Hi guys!
I'm sorry for my ignorance.
I'm putting together a new PC right now, and I will have 2 SSDs in it: an Intel 750 PCIe (400 Gb) for OS and programs and a Samsung EVO SATA (500 Gb) for files and libs.

I have never created a RAID and I'm hardly familiar with the term itself (aside from Wikipedia).

As far as I understand, there are 2 potential advantages to a RAID:
1) Performance increase; this is probably not applicable to me because speed doesn't get much better than on the Intel 750 anyway. Or am I missing something?
2) Backup. As it doesn't make sense to spend top dollar on an SSD for the backup, probably HDDs are reasonable here. But I'm concerned with potential speed decrease when adding HDDs to an SSD setup.
Besides, how much better it would be compared to just plugging in an external HDD every couple weeks and copying all the critical files onto it? That's what I usually do.

Thanks a lot in advance, and sorry for the noob question!

[whyterabbyt]

1. Not worth it for audio versus SSD
2. Most RAID configurations (except RAID-0) will give you drive redundancy but backup is actually something entirely different.

Note : your drives are different sizes. Most RAID configs possible will only use as much per drive as is available on the smallest drive in the array.

>But I'm concerned with potential speed decrease when adding HDDs to an SSD setup.

There's no such thing.

[bmrzycki]

RAID is primarily a way to minimize disk and disk controller failures (except for RAID 0). Some modes give you better read, write, or read/write performance but that tends to be a secondary benefit.

If you've never created a RAID before I strongly recommend you do not do so for any data store that you rely on. If you want to learn more that's great but treat the data as if it could disappear at any second. RAID is complex because you have more layers of hardware and software between you and your data. This creates more layers that can break or be incorrectly configured.

You're far better off using automated backup software to an external disk like Apple's Time Machine or Windows software like Rollback Rx.

Here's a picture that shows the different raid types as water coolers.

[mark3000]

Thanks a lot for the help! I will probably not
RAID for now

[SVKr0dI]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

RAID0 not recommended because of data loss when a disk failure.
RAID1 does not support TRIM (Intel RST) (http://rodi.sk/misc/intel-rapid-storage-technology-ssd-intel-535-240gb-raid-1-benchmark/) = problem (SSD).
RAID1 recommended for rotary drive for backup storage.

[Chickenman]

I bought two cheap 120gb SSD and ran them together in raid0 for sample libraries, I had the libraries backed up to local HDD and via network to the laptop storage drive. I used Create synchronicity and it runs either on demand or via scheduler to backup any changes.

I never had an issue with this setup but I only use one larger ssd now (same backup protocols in place)... and I notice no difference at all going from 1tb read to 500mb read, lol.

[Michael L]

I use RAID 1 (mirrored) external drives formatted in two sectors: one sector for Time Machine backup, and 1 sector for important audio files that I don't want to store on my harddrive, such as original audio recordings.

[DJ Warmonger]

I run at RAID 10.

In previous interation, it used to be buggy and finally broke as there were faulty disks (2) and broken cable and outdated drivers. Still it ran over the year with disks popping on and off.

Now, since I replaced all the disks and stuff, it runs flawlessly. For sure it's fast. Can't tell how good it is for storage backup, as since then none of my disks broke

[andrew71]

RAID 1 - Mirrors the content of one disk to another, so with 2 x 1Tb disks you only have 1Tb of usable capacity. If one disk fails, you can carry on although if the second disk fails too you'll lose everything.

RAID 5 - Requires at least three equal sized disks, but you lose the capacity of one disk - i.e. 3 x 1Tb disks give you a combined capacity of 2Tb. The benefit is that if one fails, you can carry on without losing any data, although access will be slower. Once you replace the failed disk, the contents of that disk will be rebuilt on the replacement and you can continue at normal access speeds. If a second disk fails before the first one is replaced, you will lose everything.

Not sure if that explains it, but the water cooler explanation for RAID 5 didn't look correct to me.

[camsr]

JBOD is the correct raid type with SSDs. RAID1 has benefits to read speed, if the OS is capable of multithreading disk IO, it can read from both disks at the same time. I think JBOD does this as well, but there is no redundancy. If your mobo cannot do JBOD, I suggest getting a raid controller.

[whyterabbyt]

JBOD is the correct raid type with SSDs.

Why? All JBOD does is present multiple separate disks as a single contiguous volume, with the inherent risk that failure of any single disk destroys the integrity of the volume. How does that make it 'the correct type' for SSDs, exactly?

[Shabdahbriah]

... If you've never created a RAID before I strongly recommend you do not do so for any data store that you rely on. If you want to learn more that's great but treat the data as if it could disappear at any second. RAID is complex... [...]

^^^ that ^^^

Thanks a lot for the help! I will probably not
RAID for now

Good call.

[Kaine]

That watercooler demo is quality.

Here's a picture that shows the different raid types as water coolers.