RAID 10 or RAID 0 - Is it worth it?

[CalebTheEternal]

So I have 4 SSD's and 2 of them have jack on them (nothing) and the other 2 are less than half full... I admit I probably wasted money on them... But anyway I was thinking why let them go to waste? Should I do RAID? If so which one? And if I do a RAID configuration do I need to wipe the drives first? Or nah (Had to do it...)? Is there a way I can store my data online? I think I got something with my new Asus Maximus VII Hero with online storage or something. And how many times can I use a windows key? I have a windows 7 key but I've used it probably 8 times. Isn't there a limit? If this matters I have 2 Samsung 840 Evo and 2 PNY Something.... All are 250gb each. 

[CoolaxGaming]

RAID 0 FTW! 

Well for me cause I dont give a szhit about redundancy.

 

Also

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

840'evos

[givingtnt]

raid 0 and do lots of backups

[CalebTheEternal]

RAID 0 FTW! 

Well for me cause I dont give a szhit about redundancy.

 

Also

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

840'evos

What's wrong with 840 Evos? They work great. Also could I do a 4 way raid in RAID 0? If that makes sense...

[CalebTheEternal]

raid 0 and do lots of backups

Do backups on what though? My HDD?

[CoolaxGaming]

What's wrong with 840 Evos? They work great. Also could I do a 4 way raid in RAID 0? If that makes sense...

They use TLC and the customer support from Samsung sucks

[CalebTheEternal]

They use TLC and the customer support from Samsung sucks

English please? Now a days almost all customer support sucks though... 

 

And do you know about this question:

 

could I do a 4 way raid in RAID 0? If that makes sense...

[givingtnt]

Do backups on what though? My HDD?

yes. 

[givingtnt]

English please? Now a days almost all customer support sucks though... 

 

And do you know about this question:

 

could I do a 4 way raid in RAID 0? If that makes sense...

yes you can do raid 0 with the 4 drives

[CalebTheEternal]

yes you can do raid 0 with the 4 drives

OK, but I would only get the data amount from 1 drive correct? And should I trust the RAID on my motherboard enough? 

[abefroman]

If you Raid the drives, you will have to wipe them. 

 

Raid 0 will stripe the drives and spread your data across them to enable quick read/write speeds.  The performance benefit has diminishing returns after 3 drives.. if I remember correctly.  Use this  raid method if the data wont be important and you want quick access.  Raid 10 will stripe and mirror your drives.  This gives you a performance boost, while protecting your data.  This will cut your total storage of the 4 drives by a little more than half.  I have a storage server with Raid 10 and my six 2TB drives = 5.45TB of usable data. 

 

The other option is creating a Storage Space if you have Windows 8.1 Pro.  This will take all 4 of your drives and pool them together for 1 visible drive.  You can add to this pool as needed.  Here, you can also do software raiding to mirror or add parity disks. 

 

I subscribe to Dropbox for backup online.  I’d recommend it if you are looking for a good solution to save your info to. 

 

Overall, Storage Space is the most user friendly.  Raid is easy, but there is a learning curve.  Hope that helps!

 

-Abe

[CoolaxGaming]

English please? Now a days almost all customer support sucks though... 

 

And do you know about this question:

 

could I do a 4 way raid in RAID 0? If that makes sense...

Yes you can do 4 way RAID 0 on your mobo, but I would recommend doing a 2 way RAID 0 with the PNY drives and a 2 Way with the samsung drives. Because the TLC on the Smasung degrades FAST.

 

Ok now to explain,

 

The Samsung 840 EVO uses a new type of flash storage, called TLC. TLC is cheaper to manufacture, but will fail faster then current mainstream SSDS. And that combined with Samsungs horrible technology makes the drives speeds go down fast.

 

OK, but I would only get the data amount from 1 drive correct? And should I trust the RAID on my motherboard enough? 

No, if you have a RAID 0 4way array, it will be - Lowest Drive x 4 = Storage Total 

[givingtnt]

OK, but I would only get the data amount from 1 drive correct? And should I trust the RAID on my motherboard enough? 

no. you would get with raid 0 full drive capacity (of all 4)

[CalebTheEternal]

If you Raid the drives, you will have to wipe them. 

 

Raid 0 will stripe the drives and spread your data across them to enable quick read/write speeds.  The performance benefit has diminishing returns after 3 drives.. if I remember correctly.  Use this  raid method if the data wont be important and you want quick access.  Raid 10 will stripe and mirror your drives.  This gives you a performance boost, while protecting your data.  This will cut your total storage of the 4 drives by a little more than half.  I have a storage server with Raid 10 and my six 2TB drives = 5.45TB of usable data. 

 

The other option is creating a Storage Space if you have Windows 8.1 Pro.  This will take all 4 of your drives and pool them together for 1 visible drive.  You can add to this pool as needed.  Here, you can also do software raiding to mirror or add parity disks. 

 

I subscribe to Dropbox for backup online.  I’d recommend it if you are looking for a good solution to save your info to. 

 

Overall, Storage Space is the most user friendly.  Raid is easy, but there is a learning curve.  Hope that helps!

 

-Abe

OK thanks for the help. And know anything about the windows key thing? Does it have max limit on how many times it can be activated?

[abefroman]

OK thanks for the help. And know anything about the windows key thing? Does it have max limit on how many times it can be activated?

Well, sort of.  You can only have 1 license active at a time.  If you reinstall the OS on a new system, it will prompt you after OS install to activate over the phone.  Call the provided #, follow the instructions, and answer that the license has only been installed on 1 system.  The automated system will then provide you will a series of numbers to reactivate Windows on the new machine.  Does this answer your question?

 

Edit: If your hardware doesn't change signifinantly between OS installs, you might be able to reinstall the OS and license as much as you want/need.  From what I understand, Windows looks at your hardware config (mobo, processor, etc) to determine the system.  If the system doesn't change, Windows overlooks the # of times the license has been used. 

 

-Abe

[CalebTheEternal]

Well, sort of.  You can only have 1 license active at a time.  If you reinstall the OS on a new system, it will prompt you after OS install to activate over the phone.  Call the provided #, follow the instructions, and answer that the license has only been installed on 1 system.  The automated system will then provide you will a series of numbers to reactivate Windows on the new machine.  Does this answer your question?

-Abe

 

If you Raid the drives, you will have to wipe them. 

 

Raid 0 will stripe the drives and spread your data across them to enable quick read/write speeds.  The performance benefit has diminishing returns after 3 drives.. if I remember correctly.  Use this  raid method if the data wont be important and you want quick access.  Raid 10 will stripe and mirror your drives.  This gives you a performance boost, while protecting your data.  This will cut your total storage of the 4 drives by a little more than half.  I have a storage server with Raid 10 and my six 2TB drives = 5.45TB of usable data. 

 

The other option is creating a Storage Space if you have Windows 8.1 Pro.  This will take all 4 of your drives and pool them together for 1 visible drive.  You can add to this pool as needed.  Here, you can also do software raiding to mirror or add parity disks. 

 

I subscribe to Dropbox for backup online.  I’d recommend it if you are looking for a good solution to save your info to. 

 

Overall, Storage Space is the most user friendly.  Raid is easy, but there is a learning curve.  Hope that helps!

 

-Abe

Yes, thank you for all of the help!

[Captain_WD]

So I have 4 SSD's and 2 of them have jack on them (nothing) and the other 2 are less than half full... I admit I probably wasted money on them... But anyway I was thinking why let them go to waste? Should I do RAID? If so which one? And if I do a RAID configuration do I need to wipe the drives first? Or nah (Had to do it...)? Is there a way I can store my data online? I think I got something with my new Asus Maximus VII Hero with online storage or something. And how many times can I use a windows key? I have a windows 7 key but I've used it probably 8 times. Isn't there a limit? If this matters I have 2 Samsung 840 Evo and 2 PNY Something.... All are 250gb each. 

 

 

Hey CalebTheEternal,

 

Here are my two cents on this:

RAID0 gives you very a good speed boost but with every drive in the array you increase the chance of failure and data loss. RAID0 offers zero redundancy and if either of the drives in it fails, drops out or goes out of synchronization you would lose all data on the whole array. RAID0 offers great speed boost but actually increases the cold booting time (the RAID needs to be initialized first) and involves a larger chance of data loss, due to its nature. Using HDDs in RAID makes more sense than using SSDs. Here's an example: games rely on storage only for their loading times and FPS and graphics will not be affected at all. Here's an example of the speed boost when using SSDs and HDDs: The jump in load times from HDD to SSD is like 10s to 1s. RAID 0 effectively (theoretically) halves the load time. So if you were to RAID 0 mechanical drives, it's 10s to 5s. You derive 5s of benefit. If you were to RAID 0 SSDs instead, its like 1s to 0.5s. You derive 0.5s of benefit.

 

RAID10 on the other hand also gives pretty good speed boost but also offers a great level of redundancy. Using 4 drives in RAID10 enables you to still have your data safe even if you lose two drives. The downside of this would be that the RAID would use half of your capacity on the array for the redundancy and you won't be able to use it. 

 

Creating a RAID array wipes and formats all drives in the RAID. It is recommended that you use similar drives with same firmware, speeds and capacity to bring to minimum any chances of data loss.

 

Captain_WD.

[CalebTheEternal]

 

Hey CalebTheEternal,

 

RAID10 on the other hand also gives pretty good speed boost but also offers a great level of redundancy. Using 4 drives in RAID10 enables you to still have your data safe even if you lose two drives. The downside of this would be that the RAID would use half of your capacity on the array for the redundancy and you won't be able to use it. 

 

Captain_WD.

 

 

So with RAID10 is it half of the TOTAL capacity? The way I'm thinking of it is you have two that are in RAID0 (Which makes it 250Gb) and then they also have to write to the other drives so would I get 250Gb or 500Gb? Am I going to technical with this? I think I'm confusing myself.

[Captain_WD]

So with RAID10 is it half of the TOTAL capacity? The way I'm thinking of it is you have two that are in RAID0 (Which makes it 250Gb) and then they also have to write to the other drives so would I get 250Gb or 500Gb? Am I going to technical with this? I think I'm confusing myself.

 

You can look at RAID10 as two RAID0 arrays of equal sizes and one of them mirrors the other and thus is not usable. If you have 4 250GB SSD this will end up in 500GB usable space and 500GB spared for redundancy out of 1TB total size of the whole array. RAID10 takes up half of the space for redundancy. Here's a visual representation.

 

Captain_WD.