Western Digital's Raptors in RAID-0: Are two drives better than one?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 1, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Office Productivity Performance - SYSMark
SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."
The Communication test generally shows decent differences between drives, but we see here that RAID-0 brings just over a 3% performance boost. In one of our most disk-influenced tests of the suite, the nail is beginning to shut the coffin for RAID-0 on the desktop.
The next test is Document Creation performance, which shows very little difference in drive performance between the contenders:
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."
Once again, we see identical performance between the RAID-0 and single drive setups.
The final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
"The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."
To finish off our individual SYSMark tests, our comments are little more than echoed once more with these results; RAID-0 does nothing for desktop performance.
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Denial - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
A$$ Masher,You seem to be the only person turned on by my system. Sorry, but I don't swing that way. You'll have a better chance at the internet cafes over in Chelsea.
TheCimmerian - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
...Anyone have any thoughts on RAID0 for DV capture/editing/rendering?...masher - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
#71, the statistics and applicability for MTBF and MTTF are a bit complex...so much so that most drive manufacturers themselves usually don't apply them properly (or intentionally mislead people).Technically, you're correct...RAID0 doesn't halve MTBF. However, for what the average user means by "chance of failure", a two-disk Raid0 array does indeed double your chance of a failure.
As to your comment of Raid-0 loading maps faster...true if its a large file (10MB+) and probably not discernably noticeable till you're in the 20-40MB range. For tiny files or heavily fragmented ones, it may even be slower.
Z80 - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
This article was very informative. However, the statements that RAID0 cuts MTBF in half and that RAID1 doubles MTBF are statistically incorrect. Also, RAID0 does improve game performance especially when large game maps are involved (i.e., BF1942, BF Vietnam, Far Cry). It definitely provides an advantage in online FPS games by loading large maps faster and giving RAIDO equipped players an advantage in first choice for weapons and position. Your tests probably didn't measure map loading times.GokieKS - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
"What's the difference between losing one 74gig Raptor in RAID-0 array or one 160gig stand-alone drive? THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE!"There is. The chance of you getting a HDD failure increases with every drive you add. A 2 disk RAID-0 array will have the same chance at failure as 2 independent non-RAIDed drives. The difference is, with the independent drives, you lose one drive's worth of data when it fails. With the RAID-0 array, you lose two.
~KS
sparky123321 - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
I keep hearing about double the cost and the additional risk associated with a RAID-0 array.First off, double the price gets you DOUBLE the capacity of a single drive. It's a wash price wise. On top of that, you increase disk performance by up to 20+%. Normally, there tends to be a decrease in performance as capacity increases when comparing similar generation drives.
Secondly, with regard to risk. What's the difference between losing one 74gig Raptor in RAID-0 array or one 160gig stand-alone drive? THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE! If you don't have a recent backup, you've lost everything. Just spend an additional $90 to buy a backup 160gig 7200rpm IDE and use Acronis to do a complete disk mirror every week or two. If you lose a RAID-0 drive, you can just boot off of the backup drive and be up and running in a matter of minutes. Worst case, you've lost you're most recent work only.
Power to the Raptors and I think I'll stick with my RAID-0 array!!!!!!!
abocz - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
I think #63 summed it up pretty well. For most real world usage the RAID0 setup never gets to shine because of the ratio of seek times/data transfers. Lower (7200) RPM drives will only compound the situation since their seek times are worse. Finally, add to this phenomenon the fact that the ratio of seeks will increase over time as fragmentation increases.Which begs the question of how well defraggers work in a RAID 0 setup? Anybody know?
Inferno - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
Maybe you should try this test with some lesser drive. The raptors are kind of the be all end all drives. Maybe a pair of midrange Maxtors.binger - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
#61, jvrobert is right in saying that the advantages of a raptor-raid0 are restricted to faster boot-up times and smoother handling of very large files, eg when it comes to dv.although i have heard similar statements before, whether a raid0-array of two 160gb samsung drives comes close to the performance of a single 74gb raptor drive, i don't know - i would surely appreciate being pointed to an appropriate review or at least a couple of significant benchmark results.
jvrobert - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
Two points:First, it doesn't matter much what card you use for RAID 0. There's no parity calculation, so onboard hardware won't help much. Probably Windows striping, Intel RAID, VIA RAID, Highpoint RAID, etc.. are within 1 percent of eachother.
Second, this is a limited test that comes to an overgeneralized conclusion. As some have mentioned - these are raptors. I have a single raptor as my OS disk. Where RAID helps is with slower drives - you can get a "virtual" raptor of e.g. 360GB by buying 2 cheap, quiet, cool Samsung spinpoints.
Third (OK, 3 points) - it only tests games (which don't use much hard disk IO) and business (again, disk speed doesn't matter much). I'm getting into video now, and RAID 0 will certainly improve performance there. It will also help with load times of the OS and of large applications.
So the article comes to an over-general conclusion limited on a few quick tests.