Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

bbplayer5

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 13, 2007
3,133
1,141
But I cant play with it until I get home :( I need to decide if i want to run parallels or bootcamp... grrr...

Going to install OSX on a raid 0 with 2 10k raptor drives :D
 

Chaszmyr

macrumors 601
Aug 9, 2002
4,267
86
I strongly advise against RAID 0. It is really not adequately stable. *Has had bad experiences*
 

X1Lightning

macrumors 6502
Feb 19, 2007
413
0
Raid 0 is no more dangerous than running a system with only one drive.
cept here you get the speed boost of 2 drives.

With any type of system you need to have a backup plan.
 

RichP

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2003
1,580
33
Motor City
Raid 0 is no more dangerous than running a system with only one drive.
cept here you get the speed boost of 2 drives.

With any type of system you need to have a backup plan.

If you drive failure rate is "x", and you have 2 drives, you double your chance of failure. Include the possibility of corruption in the read/write process that is more detrimental in RAID-0, and it is a more dangerous proposition.

Keep in mind all that time saved with RAID-0 is lost the milisecond the computer crashes.
 

eldino

macrumors member
Mar 8, 2007
65
0
Italy
The tendency by CPU manufacturers to multiply cores-number (2,4,8,16,40!) is really worth the cost? In terms of mere performances, I mean..
If i dont run more than 4-5 apps, could i take advantages from a 8 core workstation? and if the software i run is not optimized for a >1 number of cores?

Just asking :)
 

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,473
3,257
Early adopter.
Over-priced.
Under utilized.

You have a rev. A of a machine that isn't totally optimized for everything it has, essentially being on the cutting edge of something that already needs improvement to realize it's full potential. Not to mention the lack of Apps to try to come close to throttling it.

I hope you have some uses for it that will demand something of it. And that it's worth it at the end of the day.
 

NewbieNerd

macrumors 6502a
Sep 22, 2005
512
0
Chicago, IL
If you drive failure rate is "x", and you have 2 drives, you double your chance of failure.

Actually, if your drive failure rate is x and you have 2 drives, your chance of failure is 1 - (1 - x)^2. It's just that if x is pretty close to 0, that value is pretty close to 2x. :)
 

excalibur313

macrumors 6502a
Jun 7, 2003
780
5
Cambridge, MA
Raid 0 is no more dangerous than running a system with only one drive.
cept here you get the speed boost of 2 drives.

With any type of system you need to have a backup plan.

I don't understand why people get so freaked out about the failure rate of a raid 0. It should just be more likely to fail as a single drive, but drive failure is a pretty rare event. (My family has had a total of maybe 10 computers in the last 20 years and I never remember a single one failing.) Regardless of the actual failure rate, mearly doubling it shouldn't be so catastrophicly high that it prevents people from doing it. Right? I agree that backup plans are a really good idea, but raids are too. Could someone explain why it is such a bad idea that it shouldn't be tried? How are other raids like 3 or 4, are they as bad?
 

brooker

macrumors regular
Apr 4, 2007
140
0
PacNW
I don't understand why people get so freaked out about the failure rate of a raid 0. It should just be more likely to fail as a single drive, but drive failure is a pretty rare event. (My family has had a total of maybe 10 computers in the last 20 years and I never remember a single one failing.) Regardless of the actual failure rate, mearly doubling it shouldn't be so catastrophicly high that it prevents people from doing it. Right? I agree that backup plans are a really good idea, but raids are too. Could someone explain why it is such a bad idea that it shouldn't be tried? How are other raids like 3 or 4, are they as bad?

First off, RAID 0 isn't really raid, because there is no redundancy (the R in RAID). Any single drive failure will destroy all data on all drives. RAID 0 is also known as 'strip set without parity'.

RAID 1 (mirroring) tends to be a good option, because if it is implemented correctly, it can increase read times which should boost performance. Write times are not increased, and may be decreased if both drives are on the same controller, but it depends on your applications.

No one really uses RAID 2,3,4.

RAID 5 is strip set with parity, so your data is protected, and you get the speed up from striping. but it requires 3 disks, and usually a hardware controller, so it's a little harder to implement.

You can learn more... um... here: Wikipedia


hope that helps.

Serious congrats to the OP! what a great machine. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. :)
 

bbplayer5

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 13, 2007
3,133
1,141
This machine is fantastic so far!! Raid 0 working well, and yes, I have a backup plan.. im not stupid :p

I do a lot of video encoding, so I wanted to have a raid.. If it bites me in the end, i can just switch back to single drive, no big deal.
 

Spanky Deluxe

macrumors demi-god
Mar 17, 2005
5,285
1,789
London, UK
Early adopter.
Over-priced.
Under utilized.

You have a rev. A of a machine that isn't totally optimized for everything it has, essentially being on the cutting edge of something that already needs improvement to realize it's full potential. Not to mention the lack of Apps to try to come close to throttling it.

I hope you have some uses for it that will demand something of it. And that it's worth it at the end of the day.

What a genuinely constructive comment and asset to this forum...

Raid 0 is designed for fast system drives. The idea is that you have your OS and your applications in a Raid 0 system for the speed and you keep all your data somewhere safer.

As far as the failure rate, well if a drive has a 10% probability of failing in x amount of time and you have two of them which are in a Raid 0 configuration then the probability that your Raid 0 array fails in x amount of time is 19%. ((0.1 * 0.1) + (0.1 * 0.9) + (0.1 * 0.9)) * 100

Whatever you do, don't store your data on that array, at least not permanantly. I once made the silly mistake of getting two 300gb drives and putting them in a Raid 0 array for my data. One drive turned out to cause errors but I could never work out which one it was and by that point I already had 400gb of data on the array. I couldn't un-link the drives until I saved up the pennies for another big drive! I was a silly idiot who vainly wanted to have a single partition with a size over 0.5TB. What a fool!!
 

bbplayer5

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 13, 2007
3,133
1,141
This thing absolutely flies!! I love it! Video encoding with Virtualhub is bliss!
 

mugwump

macrumors regular
Jan 10, 2004
219
0
RAID 0 is not double the failure possibility. There's half the load/activity on each of the drives.

I've run RAID 0 for years now with no issues, yet I've had a few laptop drives that failed.

Get over it, and stop being such a pansy. Any drive can fail and they all require backups.
 

Pressure

macrumors 603
May 30, 2006
5,182
1,546
Denmark
I got RAID 0 running for 4 years now without a hick up.

It shouldn't prove problematic (unless you are pessimistic) but a backup plan is in order.

I would say that RAID 0 is NEEDED if you do any video-editing.
 

disconap

macrumors 68000
Oct 29, 2005
1,810
3
Portland, OR
Um, people? I think he just wants to see how fast he can get it running. Which I applaud, I am into getting the most out of hardware that you possibly can (even if it's not necessary, provided that I am not relying on the machine for work).

As for RAID 0, I've never had the OS on one, but I've been using them for a couple years as scratch drives and never had a failure, but had normal back-up drive fail. Mathematically, yes, there is double the chance of failure, since you are relying on two drives not failing, but in my experience brand new drives tend not to fail. Chances may be double, but they're still pretty slim...
 

netguy

macrumors newbie
Mar 3, 2007
23
0
If you have are continually getting a system snapshot, or backup of your OS partition, then sure...you can run a RAID0. Its the pain, or reloading everything that deters most from that setup...+ the performance increase is not outstanding.

I do however like running RAID 0 on data sets, as long as I have an exact duplicate of that dataset, that it gets backed up to.

My dataset runs 2 x 500GB SATA drives mounted in a dual drive FW800 enclosure (Mercury Elite OWC AL-800), running a RAID0. I get about 70mb/s real time, which is great, as I work with massive video files.

Fortunately, this dataset gets backed up to an exact replica, every night. So in a way, I have a striped mirror.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.