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RAID 0 speed improvement

I've got a free Samsung EV0 840 120GB from my uncle. I already got a 250 EVO 840 in my computer. Now I was asking myself if I got a significant speed boost if I put them in RAID 0. I know the total volume size will be the double of the 120 drive, but I don't need more storage I just want to try this for a speed boost.

So will the speed improvement be noticeable or should I use it just as an extra drive?

Is there a way to revert/destroy/disassemble a RAID-0 set with Disk Utility?

And recover/reconstruct the data (that is split in half) across two SSDs? I just haven't noticed enough real-world-usage improvement using RAID-0 (perhaps related question) and would like to use the 2nd SSD for something else. I do have a pre-RAID disk image from a couple of days ago.

In short, is there a straight-forward way to revert a RAID-0 set? Thank you.

How do I create a Dell Utility Partition on new hard drive?

Installed new HD on Dell Vista PC with RAIDd 0 configuration. I cannot boot from the Dell Reinstallation Windows VISTA DVD. Getting message that there's no Dell Utility partition, which was wiped with the new HD and RAID 0. Cannot boot from DVD drive although I've selected from BIOS menu.

RAID 0 with multiple HDDs versus a single SSD

Me and a buddy were debating about this earlier, and neither of us are really pros in the field. I figured someone on here might know.

The debate was about weather it would be smarter (in terms of performance and cost) to buy, say, 4 250GB HDDs and set them up in striped RAID 0, or a single smaller SSD. It seems to me that the access time advantage of the SSD would pretty much override any benefit gained from the striping, but I'm not positive. Anyone have any insight?

optimal SATA SSD configuration in new PC

I'm sold on SATA SSDs for my next PC but since their prices grow un-proportionally to their size, I'm wondering what would be the best configuration for them (for OS and Programs) would be:

1. 2 SSDs using:
   1. on-board RAID0
   2. dedicated RAID controller for RAID0
   3. software RAID0
2. 2 or 3 SSDs using one of the above controllers but as a JBOD
3. 3 SSDs in one of the above configurations using RAID5
4. 1 SSD for OS + 1 SSD for Programs
   1. the above option and with %UserProfile% on a separate drive too
5. 1 large SSD for both OS and Programs
6. one of the above options and use SATA3 controller
7. something else I haven't thought of

The OS would be x64 Windows 7 (and/or Ubuntu). Larger media files like audio/video would be located on a different drive when not being processed.

I plan on using the new PC for: gaming, transcoding HD video (m2ts), web development, watching movies.

Does RAID 0 (striping) with two SSD hard disk make any sense?

I have a notebook (Dell M6500, 16GB Ram, I7-940M) with RAID controller (hardware raid controller). At the moment I have two SATA HDDs in RAID 0 (stripe) for best performance.

I want to buy SSDs (Samsung 840 pro).

Does RAID 0 (striping) with two SSD disk make any sense or just one disk enough?

So 1 ssd 512GB (no raid) or 2 ssd 256GB (raid 0 stripe)?

How to improve Primary hard disk rate on Windows 7 Experience Index?

I’m getting confused with Windows 7 experience index; because on one of my home computers with 2 hard disks 7200 rpm configured with RAID 0 I got 5.9 as score on “ Disk data transfer rate “, while on another computer which had only one hard disk 7200 rpm got also 5.9 as score on “ disk data transfer rate “.

Shouldn’t RAID 0 configuration means high read write IO?

RAIDing flash drives

The other day I had what I thought was a great idea - I could buy up a bunch of cheap USB 2.0 drives and fill up the spaces in my 7-port USB hub for a super-fast RAID device! But in the light of day it isn't looking so good. I think that this would give me faster read times at least, but how would write times fare? Which RAID level would be best suited for this purpose? (I am trying to optimize for speed, any data doesn't need to be particularly safe.)

If this is a "good idea", or at least not completely foolhardy, how would I go about setting this up? I run Ubuntu 12.10 and Windows 8.

To RAID or not to RAID: SSDs and virtualization

I am approaching that time where my main PC has slowed enough due to Windows rot that I should probably reinstall. Instead of spending a week arm-wrestling, reinstalling and configuring only to find that I forgot to back up my Visual Studio settings yet again, I'm going to upgrade. I've already purchased all the parts and am in the process of benchmarking to find the best configuration.

I bought two Crucial M4 120GB SSDs (updated to latest firmware as of April '12: 00F) and have been running some quick benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark. Here are some results:

Single drive:

RAID 0 via Intel Z77 chipset controller:

These benchmarks are obviously not exhaustive, but I think they give me a good idea of what to expect between various configurations.

My understanding is that for most common usage patterns, namely development with Visual Studio (my primary usage), 4K reads and writes are far more common, even during builds. Between RAID 0 and not, there's little difference. But with 512K and Sequential R/W, the differences are enough to merit attention.

The thing is, in order to avoid future rot issues - and, quite frankly, because I can - I'm going to be relying a lot more on virtualization. My plan is to segment different parts of my development environment into virtual machines using VMware Workstation: Visual Studio and accompanying tools on one, SQL Server on another, Adobe Design Suite on yet another, etc. By taking advantage of VM snapshots and the easy by which it is to create or clone new ones, I believe I'll see an improvement in long-term reliability (and only ever see Adobe update pop-ups when I want to).

So, my question is, does virtualization merit the usage of a RAID 0 SSD configuration over a traditional setup (in my case, OS and bare-metal apps on one SSD, VM's on the other)? Will virtualization take advantage of the 512K and Sequential R/W strengths of RAID 0?

An observation:

I've read that some modern SSDs are capable of managing garbage collection on their own, so not having TRIM is less of an issue. I don't know how to enable this on my SSDs or even see if they support it, however.

Edit:

Regarding disaster recovery, this system also has large standard platter drives for file storage and a secondary RAID controller that I'll eventually use in a mirrored array. Combined with nightly local backups, constant off-site backup via Carbonite and consistent off-site source control check-ins, I've got a sufficient means of preventing data loss.

Practical RAID Performance?

I've always thought the following to be a general rule of thumb for RAID:

• RAID 0: Best performance for READ and WRITE from stripping, greatest risk
• RAID 1: Redundant, decent for READ (I believe it can read from different parts of a file from different hard drives), not the best for WRITE
• RAID 0+1 (01): combines redundancy of RAID 1 with performance of RAID 0
• RAID 1+0 (10): slightly better version of RAID 0+1
• RAID 5: good READ performance, bad WRITE performance, redundant

IS THIS ASSUMPTION CORRECT? (and how do they compare to a JBOD setup for R/W IO performance)

Are certain practical RAID setups better for different applications: gaming, video editing, database (Acccess or SQL)?

I was thinking about hard disk drives but does this apply to solid state drives as well?

How can I optimize the speed and lifetime of SSDs used in a RAID-0?

I have two SSDs in RAID-0 on a Windows 7, 64-bit system. Since it appears that TRIM still isn't supported with any RAID configuration of SSDs, what are some tips/workarounds that I can use?

Some things, but not limited to, that I would like to optimize are:

• file write sizes to each disk to best match each 'block' sizes that are erased by the SSD.
• speed of the RAID reads/writes
• overall health of the drives
• Settings of the RAID (i.e. stripe size)
• any other 'tips' that might be considered for a RAID of SSD's

Will my RAID0 stay intact when I move it to a new computer?

My primary drive is a 250GB WD SATA drive. So, I added 2x 500GB 7,200 RPM WD SATA drives into my Windows Vista box and created a 1TB RAID0. I then formatted the the primary drive and installed Windows 7. To my pleasant surprise when I booted into Windows 7 my RAID0 was still intact and I kept trotting along the same as I did before.

Now I am replacing my motherboard, processor, and RAM and plan on formatting the primary 250GB drive again and using it to boot for a new clean install of Windows 7.

My question is: if I move these two SATA drives which are setup for RAID0 into the new system, install Windows 7 again, will the RAID0 remain?

Edit: Software RAID. I created it within Windows. The RAID0 does NOT contain the system boot partition.

How do I clone a RAID 0 array to a single disk?

Situation:

1. One empty 120GB SSD
2. Two 60GB SSD's is RAID 0 containing a Windows 7 installation
3. The RAID is firmware-based (a.k.a. fakeRAID) which means it requires a driver for it to be seen by an operating system.

I don't want to use RAID 0 anymore; far too dangerous. I want to take the data from the RAID array and put it onto the single 120GB SSD. Ultimately, I want to keep the Windows 7 install completely intact; I don't want to reinstall anything.

Keep in mind I have multiple TB worth of free space to use as temporary storage for whatever transfers need to take place.

I looked into Clonezilla but it (as with most cloning software) doesn't support firmware-based RAID.

How to automount ntfs partation on raid0 in arch linux with systemd

Recently, I switched from initscript to systemd followed this wiki, and I got error like this during boot:

Job dev-md126p5.device/start timed out

This is my fstab:

/dev/mapper/VGLinux-lvroot / ext4 rw,relatime,stripe=64,data=ordered 0 1
/dev/mapper/VGLinux-lvhome /home ext4 rw,relatime,stripe=64,data=ordered 0 2
/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0
/dev/md126p5 /media/data ntfs-3g uid=xiaoxing,gid=users 0 0

Here is my partition scheme: I have two hard drives which are identical and as default, it is a raid0. Three partitions like this:

1. windows 7, 200GB, ntfs
2. linux, 100GB, lvm / , 30GB, ext4 /home , 30GB, ext4 the rest for future expend.
3. data, rest, ntfs

After the "timed out", it throws me into an emergency mode, I can mount the data partition manually, and run "systemctl default", it will start the system properly. Or I can comment out the "data" part in the fstab file, and get into the system and mount it easily.

There is no problem before I switched to systemd. Now I've tried everything including write my own .service file to mount it, but it still can not mount the partition during boot. Any ideas?

EDIT #1

The error above was from the journalctl, the error printed on screen during boot is:

[ TIME ] Timed out waiting for device dev-md126p5.device.

And followed by a lot of [ DEPEND ], then I am in emergency mode.

I am just curious what is the cause? Is it because it is on a raid, or because it is a ntfs partition?

raid 0 data recovery?

HI All,

I have two identical seagate 7200.9 500Gb drives confiured as a RAID 0 spanned disk in windows.

One of the drives has lost power and wont spin up at all.
I know this normally means death for the data on both drives but i have a cunning plan..

DISK 1 - NO POWER RAID 0 DISK
DISK 2 - FULLY FUNCTIONAL RAID 0 DISK
DISK 3 - FULLY FUNCTIONAL SPARE DISK

Copy the working drive (disk 2) data to a third 500GB DISK (disk 3), remove the logic board from the working disk (disk 2) and replace it with the non working logic board on the broken drive (disk 1) , then hopefully recreate the RAID 0 with disk 1 and disk 3, just long enough to get the data off it.

Hope this makes sense, here are my questions:

Windows disk manager atm recognises disk 2 but wont let me access it in anyway, therefore copying the data off it (or getting a disk image) cant be done in windows.

1. Does anyone know of any software (in linux or self booting) that would allow me to access this disk?
2. Anyone know of any software that will recreate the spanned drive off two disk images
3. Am i missing any key information that means i definitely shouldn't even bother starting this, i know its a long shot anyway but its worth a try unless i definitely cant do it.

The irritating thing is that i am sure its a logic board failure on disk 1 as it simply wont power up at all, suddenly no signs of life, so i am sure the data is intact!

Any help would be really appreciated!

Thanks