How often does RAID0 fail?

[ManIkWeet]

I am just wondering how often RAID0 really fails, never read anything about it on these forums. Yet everyone is always going all "backupy"

[pwn_intended]

RAID 0 theoretically fails twice as often as a single drive would fail.

[Arty]

depends on the drives

example intel drives last a shit ton longer compared to ofbrand drives

[Jade]

@Captain_WD 

 

Fails as often as drives often. Not worth the speed benefit unless you're doing backups or have nothing over value. Period.

[LukaP]

well if one drive fails, the data is lost. read into it however you want. Ive never had an HDD failiure, plus all my sensitive data is backed up 3 different ways, so i would not care. someone else had the misfortune and 4 consecutive failiures, and will not raid0 at all

[Oshino Shinobu]

Theoretically, it fails twice as often as a single drive. It never really works out like that, but there's two drives that could fail, rather than one. 

 

EDIT: The possibility of failure goes up for every drive that you add. 

[Judahnator]

I have NEVER had a hard drive fail. I have RAID 1 in my NAS server, for redundancy. So far, both drives are in good health. This means i could have done RAID 0 and it would be just fine.

 

Basically, with two drives in RAID 0 you are doubeling the chance of failure. However, if you use good drives the chance of failure is still only 0.01%, so double that to 0.02% and you should still be fine.

[alpenwasser]

Honestly, I sincerely doubt that there is any way for us to get reliable data

about this, best you'll probably get is theoretical considerations, educated

guesses and some anecdotal evidence.

I doubt there are users out there who have a high enough amount of RAID0 configs

in deployment to provide a statistically significant sample, and even if there

are, I don't think they'll be sharing that data with us, let alone in a manner

which would make it verifiable so that we could actually consider it to be reliable

and draw meaningful and valid conclusions from it.

I am of course happy to be proven wrong as I would be very curious about this

as well.

[m_tieu]

I've had a few HDD's fail after years of use but I've never had any issues with the RAID0 SSD's in my system. I don't keep any important data on my PC so I'm not too concerned. I would recommend keeping a backup of important data somewhere else just in case something happens. The speed boost is nice, but the convenience of dealing with one volume makes it worth the risk for me.

[Dredgy]

I've had a bunch of hard drive failures (over 30) but never on RAID 0. Though I only have ever had one RAID 0 setup, and that's my current one. If one drive fails, you lose the lot, so backup, and drives can fail seemingly at random (and in the case of mechanical drives from the same batch, if one fails, the other is likely to too).

That said, about 4 months into my current RAID 0 setup the RAID CONTROLLER failed and the drives became Un-RAIDed and I had to have the motherboard replaced, which took two months and then a good week of data recovery to get everything back to normal.

[ManWithBeard1990]

well if one drive fails, the data is lost. read into it however you want. Ive never had an HDD failiure, plus all my sensitive data is backed up 3 different ways, so i would not care. someone else had the misfortune and 4 consecutive failiures, and will not raid0 at all

Actually I've had a drive on the way out once and I was able to rescue everything important. It was generating errors on stuff newly written to the bad sectors, but older stuff could be read just fine. That graciousness in failure is something SSDs typically don't have. When they go, they run for a while in read-only and upon reboot they're bricked.

[ManIkWeet]

Seeing a lot of HDD answers around here. I do wonder about SSDs more though.

 

Still no one that actually had a catastrophic failure though

[Blebekblebek]

you have to be more specific, because raid is a system, fail because HDD failure? controller failure? Driver failure?, every single fail of the sub-system will make RAID fail.

 

anyway in terms of RAID, RAID0 is never considered as a "RAID" because raid = redundant array of independent disks, and RAID0 is not Redundant solution.

[alpenwasser]

Seeing a lot of HDD answers around here. I do wonder about SSDs more though.

It's likely going to be the same answers as for HDDs: Nobody really has any reliable

information, so all you'll end up with will be guesses and anecdotal evidence from

personal experience. In fact, if anyone will have any actual data on this, it is

much more likely to be about HDDs than SSDs since they have been around much longer

and in much larger numbers.

 

you have to be more specific, because raid is a system, fail because HDD failure? controller failure? Driver failure?, every single fail of the sub-system will make RAID fail.

I reckon OP is primarily talking about drive failure, but yes, very good point actually,

controller failure and such are of course also a potential risk.

 

anyway in terms of RAID, RAID0 is never considered as a "RAID" because raid = redundant array of independent disks, and RAID0 is not Redundant solution.

True, RAID0 isn't redundant, but it's not like there is an alternative widely understood

term for it (at least none that I could find); RAID0 seems to have established itself as

the commonly used term despite that discrepancy. Such is life (see "ATM machine",

"SMS message" and so on).

[Captain_WD]

I am just wondering how often RAID0 really fails, never read anything about it on these forums. Yet everyone is always going all "backupy"

 

 

Hey ManlkWeet,

 

As the guys said, there is no certain way to tell how often a RAID array would fail. It depends on many factors such as the drives in the array, the controller, the environment, the way it is used, etc. The most common purpose for RAID failures is when a drive within the array fails or drops out. That chance increases when the drives are not similar (same capacity, speed, firmware, model, brand, etc.) and are not NAS/RAID class drives (they have additional features in the build of the drive and the firmware that enable them to work safer and more stable). 

 

There are RAID arrays that last for years without failing. There are also RAID arrays that produce bad drives every few hours. RAID0 is the most risky RAID type as it offers no redundancy and depends heavily on the drives' compatibility. I would suggest using RAID class drives that are very similar or identical for better safety, lowest chance of failure and to always have a backup.

 

Captain_WD.