Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Are Windows Dynamic Disks Reliable?
f0dder:
RAID 1 is actually slower with disk writing than a single disk (though faster on disk read).-Carol Haynes (February 25, 2008, 08:26 PM)
--- End quote ---
With good systems, you shouldn't have a really noticable degradation in write speed compared to a single-disk config... and, the flipside, on bad systems you won't see any improvement for read speed. Depends on the RAID implementation. NForce4 sucks, Intel RAID Matrix rocks :)
I don't really see the point though as data integrity is the only benefit with RAID 1 and that is easily acheivable in realtime with continuous backup system.-Carol Haynes (February 25, 2008, 08:26 PM)
--- End quote ---
Yup, data integrity is the reason you should choose RAID MIRROR, but ~doubling read speed doesn't hurt :)
For example, AutoSave intercepts every disk write and mirrors a version of the new/altered file to an alternative location - this gives the same benefits of RAID 1 but adds the benefit of realtime file versioning (you can set it to keep n updated copies of files so you can instantly receive n generations of file changes - nuch more useful than RAID mirroring).-Carol Haynes (February 25, 2008, 08:26 PM)
--- End quote ---
Yes, that's certianly cute and you don't get that with a raid mirror. But if the realtime sync/backup is implemented without a filter driver, performance will be hellish for large files...
I personally wouldn't trust my data on anything but raid mirror, not even the fancy-pants parity schemes either - RAID-5 (the typical parity based RAID mode) can still only save you form a single crashing disk, and rebuilding is an expensive operation... I've heard more than one horror story where a second drive fails during rebuild, and then you're S-O-L.
My current setup is to have a 400gig raid mirror on my fileserver, and... ummm... not doing any automated backups of my workstation >_<. I haven't decided on a backup app yet, as I haven't found any I really like. But the goal is definitely to do incremental backups to the fileserver. I already have my most important stuff there, though, which is my source code - and that is automatically backed up with rsnapshot.
I plan to upgrade to a better motherboard in a while, since this board doesn't have the intel RAID matrix - once I do, I'll group the two 74gig raptors, and split into a MIRROR and a STRIPE part (that's the beauty of raid matrix, it allows you to have both a mirror and a stripe with only two disks). Mirror for all my important data, stripe for windows+apps+games and "scratchpad use" - in other words, stuff it doesn't hurt losing.
4wd:
Humm, wouldn't say RAID STRIPE (I prefer the names to the numbers, to avoid confusion)
-f0dder (February 25, 2008, 07:19 PM)
--- End quote ---
I prefer the numbers for exactly the same reason :D
But for video editing before the encoding process, sure thing.
--- End quote ---
From my experience using it with video capture from a digital video camera, it isn't. Capturing to a single drive is no problem because the bandwidth required for capture is well below typical drive throughput, (hence where I said a 4200RPM drive is fast enough - if you have problems capturing, the fault generally lies elsewhere, eg. PIO, background processes). Editing from one source drive to a separate destination drive will beat a RAID 0 array every time simply because there is no drive thrashing. The only way it would be better is to go from one RAID 0 to another RAID 0 and/or using better drives - desktop drives are no match for enterprise drives that are manufactured for the increased requests.
But I dunno how useful it is for stuff other than that, really. "But, game load speeds should drop!" - yeah well, I put the entire of "Thief 3: Deadly Shadows" on a RAM disk, which is plenty faster than the fastest RAID stripe you can muster, and that didn't do anything for game load speed.
--- End quote ---
I don't think it would change 'game load speed' but what about loading of data during game play? I'm talking about those games that pause every so often to load in the next >200MB resource file.
I don't agree that RAID MIRROR is too much hassle for home setups, and you shouldn't be comparing it to backups - those are two entirely different things. A mirror won't help you against stupid accidents or malware, a good backup solution can do that (if you disconnect the backup location once done). At the other hand, if you only backup once per day, you risk losing a whole day's work if you don't have a mirror.
--- End quote ---
When I refer to 'home environment' I don't include a business, (which is what your "whole day's work" implies to me), that runs from home - that's no different from a business in a store or a corporation, (except in size), AFAIC - and as such your backup strategy should be more robust.
When I refer to home environment it is reference to the generic home PC that's used for games, internet, the odd word processing, picture collections, etc. For that, I really don't see any need for RAID. Not even for video editing which I do at home on my general purpose PC.
RAID MIRROR and a proper backup strategy goes hand in hand, really.
--- End quote ---
Yep, no problem with this for business applications, (and those that are just plain paranoid :)). But for generic home applications a decent backup setup is more than adequate and a lot less hassle when it comes to restoration in the case of a fault.
f0dder:
From my experience using it with video capture from a digital video camera, it isn't. Capturing to a single drive is no problem because the bandwidth required for capture is well below typical drive throughput, (hence where I said a 4200RPM drive is fast enough - if you have problems capturing, the fault generally lies elsewhere, eg. PIO, background processes).-4wd (February 25, 2008, 09:05 PM)
--- End quote ---
Capturing is one thing, but editing, scrolling through frames etc... I would think a stripe makes things a bit more comfortable there? And whether a 4200rpm drive is appropriate for capture probably also depends on the source format... how much throughput does HD video require?
I don't think it would change 'game load speed' but what about loading of data during game play? I'm talking about those games that pause every so often to load in the next >200MB resource file.-4wd (February 25, 2008, 09:05 PM)
--- End quote ---
I thought it would have helped there, since many games seem to have relatively low CPU usage while loading, indicating that they're disk bound. But my RAMdisk try with Thief3 was disappointing, and a "die/reload/try-again/die/..." cycle in half-life2 where everything should be in disk cache (8 gigs of ram...) it was pretty much the same results, so I don't think a stripe would help much there.
I wonder what the games are doing during load, if it's neither CPU nor disk I/O bound. Perhaps something to do wrt. uploading textures to the GPU, but that's supposed to be super fast (PCI-e x16 has quite some bandwidth). I really don't know :)
When I refer to 'home environment' I don't include a business, (which is what your "whole day's work" implies to me), that runs from home - that's no different from a business in a store or a corporation, (except in size), AFAIC - and as such your backup strategy should be more robust.-4wd (February 25, 2008, 09:05 PM)
--- End quote ---
I know my backup strategy isn't robust enough :-[ :eusa_naughty:
When I refer to home environment it is reference to the generic home PC that's used for games, internet, the odd word processing, picture collections, etc. For that, I really don't see any need for RAID. Not even for video editing which I do at home on my general purpose PC.-4wd (February 25, 2008, 09:05 PM)
--- End quote ---
As long as a solid backup strategy is in place, a mirror wouldn't be necessary for that kind of home use. But a backup strategy certainly is, lots of people have irreplacable data on their systems now, and don't even think about the possibility of their drive dying... photo albums, anyone?
Yep, no problem with this for business applications, (and those that are just plain paranoid :)). But for generic home applications a decent backup setup is more than adequate and a lot less hassle when it comes to restoration in the case of a fault.-4wd (February 25, 2008, 09:05 PM)
--- End quote ---
Agreed. I'm probably borderline paranoid ;). But I've experienced losing 3 years of programming and stuff (a mirror wouldn't have helped me then though, but that opened my eyes), and I've been very close to losing a lot of work due to a drive failure.
Anyway, the RAID MIRROR is crucial for my fileserver, since that's where I store the backups (yeah, I do have manual backups of a lot of stuff, I still need an automated scheme though :)).
4wd:
Anyway, the RAID MIRROR is crucial for my fileserver, since that's where I store the backups (yeah, I do have manual backups of a lot of stuff, I still need an automated scheme though :)).
-f0dder (February 26, 2008, 05:28 AM)
--- End quote ---
How about SyncBackSE, (since DC have a discount in place at the moment) persuaded me to upgrade from the free version ;)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version