08-10-2005, 02:01 AM
Hi,
If these were to be work computers, I'd completely agree with you. As these are going to be game machines, the failure of a storage system is not a big deal. Or at least it is not to me. I'm very good at weekly backups. I can restore all the software from original media, or the backed-up download files. And the loss of one week's 'work' in building a character just means I get another chance to do it better. I've had hard drives go south on me before. I survived then, I'll probably survive again.
It is true that doubling the drives (almost) doubles the probability of failure. However, modern drives have very high MTBF ratings. Given the usage a gaming drive gets (as opposed to, say, a data server drive), the probability of failure, even when doubled, is negligible.
The one thing that did worry me from your post was the lack of performance benefit. Since I can get a larger drive cheaper (in most cases and in the 200-300 GB range) than I can two drives half its size, I would be wasting my money going with RAID 0. However, the test you linked to did not convince me.
My search on the internet had led me to a few people claiming that RAID 0 did nothing for their performance. However, the more technically competent accounts run more like this one. If you don't care to read the whole article, just scan the test results (they actually begin in the section 'Test Configuration'.) It appears that RAID 0 gives about 80 to 90% performance boost over a single disk.
But then I found another well written and apparently technically competent review located here. The interesting thing about this review is that it agrees with both the general performance boost and the failure to boost game performance.
Overall, I'd say I'm convinced and will go with a larger single drive.
Thanks for the heads up. I only wish I knew what was going on here.
--Pete
If these were to be work computers, I'd completely agree with you. As these are going to be game machines, the failure of a storage system is not a big deal. Or at least it is not to me. I'm very good at weekly backups. I can restore all the software from original media, or the backed-up download files. And the loss of one week's 'work' in building a character just means I get another chance to do it better. I've had hard drives go south on me before. I survived then, I'll probably survive again.
It is true that doubling the drives (almost) doubles the probability of failure. However, modern drives have very high MTBF ratings. Given the usage a gaming drive gets (as opposed to, say, a data server drive), the probability of failure, even when doubled, is negligible.
The one thing that did worry me from your post was the lack of performance benefit. Since I can get a larger drive cheaper (in most cases and in the 200-300 GB range) than I can two drives half its size, I would be wasting my money going with RAID 0. However, the test you linked to did not convince me.
My search on the internet had led me to a few people claiming that RAID 0 did nothing for their performance. However, the more technically competent accounts run more like this one. If you don't care to read the whole article, just scan the test results (they actually begin in the section 'Test Configuration'.) It appears that RAID 0 gives about 80 to 90% performance boost over a single disk.
But then I found another well written and apparently technically competent review located here. The interesting thing about this review is that it agrees with both the general performance boost and the failure to boost game performance.
Overall, I'd say I'm convinced and will go with a larger single drive.
Thanks for the heads up. I only wish I knew what was going on here.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?