RAID 0

HughHugh CameramanSan Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
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<div class="IPBDescription">Anyone got any experience?</div>Hi everyone!

I'm planning on adding RAID 0 to my main recording rig to decrease editing time. The read/write demands of 1080p fraps is insane! I was wondering if there were any benevolent experts out there who could give me some advice.

Is it possible to set up a new RAID 0 array in an existing machine? That is, keep my current windows installation? Obviously I won't touch any of the existing disks, I just want the array to be for storage, not booting.
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Comments

  • MOOtantMOOtant Join Date: 2010-06-25 Member: 72158Members
    Use same hard drives, it's recommended. Every modern motherboard has some kind of RAID 0 support so you have to check your manual.

    If you're using drive that will be included in RAID 0 now as system drive then you pretty much have to reinstall Windows.
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  • FaskaliaFaskalia Wechsellichtzeichenanlage Join Date: 2004-09-12 Member: 31651Members, Constellation
    Screw software RAID. Use a hardware RAID.

    RAID 0 means that if one disk goes bad, all your data goes bad.
    If you fear power outages your controller should have a battery protected write cache.

    Depending on how much storage you need I would buy a single SSD instead of a RAID 0 HDD.
    A single 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 will beat the ###### out of your HDD Raid, performance wise.
    Decent RAID controllers support RAID 0 over more than 2 disks.

    If you simply crave speed make a RAID out of several SSDs.


    Setting up a hardware raid is pretty simple. Install the controller and the disks. When booting press a key combo (ctr+c or ctr+d are common) and you will be prompted with the BIOS of the RAID controller.
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  • Cereal_KillRCereal_KillR Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1837Members
    RAID arrays of SSDs aren't recommenced due to the lack of trim right? OR is that fixed?
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  • MOOtantMOOtant Join Date: 2010-06-25 Member: 72158Members
    He meant single SSD instead of 2 HDDs with platters configured in RAID 0.

    I'm not sure if 60 GB is such a good idea if 1 hour of uncompressed 1080p = 1920 x 1080 x 3 bytes x 30 Hz x 3600 s = 648 GB. 180 MB/s. :> It might pack it with some simple lossless compression in real-time and I might have gotten some things wrong but numbers are big.
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  • sheena_yanaisheena_yanai Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11426Members
    running a revodrive x2 here, thats a quad raid 0 pci express solid state drive with like 740 mb/s read..but i measured the read speed up to 760mb/s writes are hella fast aswell, perfect for recording and video encoding
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  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited January 2011
    Are you really going past the HDD capabilities though when encoding?


    Also hardware RAID > Software

    Also SSD RAID > HDD RAID


    OCZ seems like a good SSD choice... It comes close to them Intels, which are very coin heavy indeed...
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  • MOOtantMOOtant Join Date: 2010-06-25 Member: 72158Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1821427:date=Jan 4 2011, 03:50 PM:name=sheena_yanai)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sheena_yanai @ Jan 4 2011, 03:50 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1821427"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->running a revodrive x2 here, thats a quad raid 0 pci express solid state drive with like 740 mb/s read..but i measured the read speed up to 760mb/s writes are hella fast aswell, perfect for recording and video encoding<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    You didn't mention capacity of your revo. 960GB revo costs $4000 here. RAID 0 of traditional drives is cheapest option that achieves around 200 MB/s write with good capacity (PNG compressed 1 hour is around 100GB, uncompressed 600GB).
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    edited January 2011
    Okay, everyone go back and re-read the first post in the thread. I read it ONCE and managed to find three posts that asked question that NS2HD answered in the first post or made assumptions that were wrong given what he already said. READ FIRST, then post.

    Two short paragraphs do NOT entitle you to tl;dr.

    Edit: AND GET OFF MY ###### LAWN!
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  • SpoogeSpooge Thunderbolt missile in your cheerios Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 67Members
    Yes, it's possible to add a RAID 0 config to your current setup. Use an add-on RAID controller card (recommend LSI or Adaptec) and look for WesternDigital RAID Edition drives.

    Note: RAID 0 is not a safe storage solution. What you gain in performance (arguable) you will lose in risk of data loss. If you go ahead with this setup, I highly recommend a rigorous backup solution.
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  • sheena_yanaisheena_yanai Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11426Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1821413:date=Jan 4 2011, 11:08 PM:name=Cereal_KillR)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Cereal_KillR @ Jan 4 2011, 11:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1821413"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->RAID arrays of SSDs aren't recommenced due to the lack of trim right? OR is that fixed?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    lack of trim is not realy an issue, the ssd has enough idle cycles so a sandforce controller can perform its garbage collection, thats like post trim. It just prepares and marks cells to be writable when the drive is idle, so you wont get write time degrading. Trim was just meant for windows to do that on the fly as soon data gets erased
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  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    I read once that when SSD's age they slow down... Any truth to this?
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  • sheena_yanaisheena_yanai Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11426Members
    no, the slowdown comes mainly from the fragmentation of the drive which is needed to limit the wear on the write cells of the drive. when the write limit of the cell is reached it will be marked as dead, and the data it contains will still be accessible, until you need to delete it. in this case a "spare" cell will move up from a sector of the nand flash you usualy can not access, which is reserved for keeping back a few megs/gigs of spare cells, depending on the size of your drive. also having at least a 3rd or so of your drive free will make the trim and garbage collection operation the drive performs easier because the data has room to be moved around. also a ssd does not suddenly die like a hdd, it slowly degrades to a point where it has no more writeable cells (today killing off a whole drive takes as long as it would be with a normal hdd at regular use), at this point the whole drive is no more than a read only flash memory, data isnt lost. speed decrease isnt realy noticable on my quad raid 0 ssd , even without trim, its in operation now for quite some time and its so damn snappy,best for this drive is 24/7 operation, like torrenting and rendering, because that way it has tons of idle time to do all the little self maintenance things. my revodrive has 5 years waranty on the nand flash memory against failure, even if i try to kill it with write heavy applications i guess i couldnt do it.
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  • HughHugh Cameraman San Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
    Well I settled on 3 Spintpoint F3's in software RAID 0. No PCI slots left for a controller, which also costs $$$ and post-install MoBo RAID = Death!

    But then I did some maths and realised that my current sustained write speed to 1 F3 is enough to maintain a 1080p29.97 stream. My frames are being dropped somewhere else in the pipe at the moment. I guess I will only have to bite this bullet if YouTube ever goes 1080p60!

    Thanks for the input everyone.
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  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited January 2011
    <!--quoteo(post=1821925:date=Jan 6 2011, 06:53 AM:name=NS2HD)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NS2HD @ Jan 6 2011, 06:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1821925"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I guess I will only have to bite this bullet if YouTube ever goes 1080p60!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Heh, in about 15 years perhaps they might stream TrueHD...


    I mean their "1080p30" is only running in between 5-6Mbps :P


    720p is even lower in between 1.8-2.5Mbps, makes me wonder why I encode VBR of 9-15Mbps...
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