Mechanical drives in raid?

[ImNotThere]

I have 2 6 tb drives coming and speaking to a friend they seem to think running them in raid is a good idea but i dont even know how to?

[Skanky Sylveon]

RAID 0 or 1?

[ImNotThere]

Just now, Cinnabar Sonar said:

RAID 0,1 or 5?

Thats what im unsure of, can i do all of those? How do i do it? Itll be on an x99 system so i know it doesnt have a hardware controller right?

[Skanky Sylveon]

I made a mistake on my first post, you can not run raid 5 without at least 3 drives.

 

RAID 0 stripes your drives, it gives a modest speed boost, but if one of your two drives fails, you loose all of your data.  I wouldn't recommend RAID 0 unless you don't value your data.  

 

RAID 1 mirrors all of your data, if one of your drive fails, you still have all of your data on the second drive, but you lose half of your capacity.

 

Most motherboards support both RAID 0 and RAID 1.

[Armakar]

The only raid worth running for 2 drives would be raid 1. Raid 0 could work but I wouldn't see why a home user would bother to use raid 0 at all. Raid 5,6 etc aren't possible with 2 drives so they are out of the question.

 

RAID isn't needed for home users imo.To be honest, I rarely see HDDs fail, only after years of usage.

[ImNotThere]

1 minute ago, Armakar said:

The only raid worth running for 2 drives would be raid 1. Raid 0 could work but I wouldn't see why a home user would bother to use raid 0 at all. Raid 5,6 etc aren't possible with 2 drives so they are out of the question.

 

RAID isn't needed for home users imo.To be honest, I rarely see HDDs fail, only after years of usage.

Its not just for home use, its for higher education i do a lot of 4k rendering and save raw footage a lot haha, i have like 4tb stored away already just wanted to increase speed a little and from what i understand raid combines the storage so itd be easier right?

[Skanky Sylveon]

2 minutes ago, ImNotThere said:

Its not just for home use, its for higher education i do a lot of 4k rendering and save raw footage a lot haha, i have like 4tb stored away already just wanted to increase speed a little and from what i understand raid combines the storage so itd be easier right?

RAID 0 would help with that, however you are also doubling your failure rate.

[Armakar]

1 minute ago, ImNotThere said:

Its not just for home use, its for higher education i do a lot of 4k rendering and save raw footage a lot haha, i have like 4tb stored away already just wanted to increase speed a little and from what i understand raid combines the storage so itd be easier right?

RAID combines the storage (kind) but it's mostly used for A) speeding stuff up slightly or B (main reason) ensuring data isn't lost.

If you have another disk lying around, Raid 5 could be a good option. Raid 5 means if one drive fails, the other two will rebuild the data it had. Raid 5 only sucks if two drives fail at the same time, which is pretty unlikely.

 

[ImNotThere]

Just now, Armakar said:

RAID combines the storage (kind) but it's mostly used for A) speeding stuff up slightly or B (main reason) ensuring data isn't lost.

If you have another disk lying around, Raid 5 could be a good option. Raid 5 means if one drive fails, the other two will rebuild the data it had. Raid 5 only sucks if two drives fail at the same time, which is pretty unlikely.

 

So maybe invest in another 6 tb drive? Ill need to eventually anyways so is that a good idea?

[Armakar]

3 minutes ago, ImNotThere said:

So maybe invest in another 6 tb drive? Ill need to eventually anyways so is that a good idea?

If you run it in raid 5, sure. Raid 0 sounds like a bad idea if your data is valueble at all. Raid 5 is pretty good if you want security.

[Skanky Sylveon]

3 minutes ago, Armakar said:

RAID combines the storage (kind) but it's mostly used for A) speeding stuff up slightly or B (main reason) ensuring data isn't lost.

If you have another disk lying around, Raid 5 could be a good option. Raid 5 means if one drive fails, the other two will rebuild the data it had. Raid 5 only sucks if two drives fail at the same time, which is pretty unlikely.

Unless you are using a RAID card, then the speed of RAID 5 especially writes, can be slow.

[ImNotThere]

1 minute ago, Armakar said:

If you run it in raid 5, sure. Raid 0 sounds like a bad idea if your data is valueble at all. Raid 5 is pretty good if you want security.

Its not like truly valuable, just raw footage in 4k so not truly necessary, my parents got me a 10 tb drive that i plug in and move final cuts on to so write speeds id imagine would be faster and better

[Armakar]

2 minutes ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

Unless you are using a RAID card, then the speed of RAID 5 especially writes, can be slow.

Agreed, but OP wasn't clear on what he's actually interested in raid for. If it's for speed raid 0 is fine, but from the sounds of it he has valueble 4k footage on there, so I guess raid 5 or raid 1 is fine.

 

edit: he was just clear so screw raid 5

[ImNotThere]

1 minute ago, Armakar said:

Agreed, but OP wasn't clear on what he's actually interested in raid for. If it's for speed raid 0 is fine, but from the sounds of it he has valueble 4k footage on there, so I guess raid 5 or raid 1 is fine.

 

edit: he was just clear so screw raid 5

So raid 0 is fine? Do i need software raid or can x99 handle it?

[Skanky Sylveon]

3 minutes ago, ImNotThere said:

So raid 0 is fine? Do i need software raid or can x99 handle it?

Your BIOS should have RAID settings, also software should be fine, I would recommend you get an extra drive later for backing up your data.

[ImNotThere]

23 minutes ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

Your BIOS should have RAID settings, also software should be fine, I would recommend you get an extra drive later for backing up your data.

Ill get another 10 tb for back up, storage is so expensive lmao

[Skanky Sylveon]

Just now, ImNotThere said:

Ill get another 10 tb for back up, storage is so expensive lmao

Yes, yes it is.  As long as you regularly back up your data, then the speed boost that RAID 0 gives might prove useful for saving raw footage.