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Partitioning hard drive - any point?

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Carol Haynes:
Err, you seems to be confusing RAID 1 with another RAID: http://www.bytepile.com/raid_class.php#02
I like my RAID 1 a lot
-brotherS (October 16, 2005, 06:18 AM)
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No that is exactly what I was thinking ...

RAID 0 (Striping) is great for faster access as two or more drives are used simulatneously to spread the reading/writing. Trouble is the way that is acheived varies from controller to controller (even within a manufacturer) and so a hardware failre in the RAID interface could render your array unrecoverable. A single error on any one of the discs could similarly do likewise.

RAID 1 (Mirroring) is great but it requires two drives to store one data set which is saved to both. This is great if you like to guard against drive failure, but that is quite expensive for home users because you use two drives to effectively do the job of one! If you like this security great - but there is no performance benefit over a normal single drive.

I suppose the best solution is RAID 0+1 where you have both - but then you really need 4 (or more) discs to benefit since half the discs are used in RAID 0 mode, and the other half produce a security mirror. It gives you speed benefit and security but at a price!

mouser:
it's probably just me but i am reluctant to use raid striping, just for fear of hd crash, even though it could give you better speed.
raid mirroring seems promising though, in terms of reliability.

brotherS:
Err, you seems to be confusing RAID 1 with another RAID: http://www.bytepile.com/raid_class.php#02
I like my RAID 1 a lot
-brotherS (October 16, 2005, 06:18 AM)
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No that is exactly what I was thinking ...

RAID 1 (Mirroring) is great but it requires two drives to store one data set which is saved to both. This is great if you like to guard against drive failure, but that is quite expensive for home users because you use two drives to effectively do the job of one! If you like this security great - but there is no performance benefit over a normal single drive.
-CarolHaynes (October 16, 2005, 10:56 AM)
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Err... :) let me quote the page:
Advantages: Twice the Read transaction rate of single disks. 100% redundancy of data means no rebuild is necessary in case of a disk failure, just a copy to the replacement disk.
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I still think it's good for home users - it's more safe and speeds things up and HDs are not that expensive anymore if you don't 'need' to buy the very latest model on the market to compete with friends or neighbors.

clif_notes:
I'll read that page later, seems to be interesting. Since I spent lots of time thinking about that here's what I think now:

You should use at least 3 partitions:

* one for your OS and programs (some prefer to split up even those, I don't feel the need)
* second for your data
* third for the swap file - this increases the performance, though will not be needed anymore as soon as Gigabyte's i-RAM (Affordable Solid State Storage) version 2 comes out! :)
#1 reason to use a seperate partition for your data is that when you have severe problems a rescue program might help to recover most of your data - but not, if Windows just wrote randomly over appearingly empty blocks...  :huh:

#2 reason is that indexing programs (for example the great Google Sidebar, which also lets you view the DonationCoder.com RSS feeds perfectly) just don't need to care about your OS partition at all.

#3-10 reasons may follow later ;)

-brotherS (October 14, 2005, 01:46 PM)
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I don't recall how I arrived at this scheme, but I use EXACTLY the same partitions on mine.

brotherS:
I don't recall how I arrived at this scheme, but I use EXACTLY the same partitions on mine.
-clif_notes (October 16, 2005, 12:44 PM)
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