Does RAID0 Really Increase Disk Performance?

[Hardware Secrets Team]

There has been a new article posted.

Title: Does RAID0 Really Increase Disk Performance?
URL: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/394

Here is a snippet:
"RAID0, also known as data striping, can be used if you want to increase your PC disk performance, being recommended to high-end PCs. It works by accessing two identical hard disk drives in parallel, s..."

Comments on this article are welcome.

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Hardware Secrets Team
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com

[Felix]

Hey,
You guys do a really great job on explaining everything. Thanks for your hard work. On a second note, can there be Raid0 HDD's? To be more specific, Hard drives with many multiple disks inside that automatically perform the raid function? I understand that my hard drive already has two "disks" inside but I don't understand how that works. Also, my HDD is a 10,000 RPM, does that really make a difference? Thanks again for all the testing you guys put in!
-Felix

[Gabriel Torres]

No, this does not exist.

What exists though are external cabinets with several hard disk drives under RAID, targeted to be network storage devices.

Best regards,
Gabriel.

[Skye]

I have forcefully pried open a couple rust buckets before and I am pretty sure they did have a pair of disks inside, are they called platters? But they are part of the same hard disk and function as one unit. I have also never heard of a single hard disk that can perform Raid operations, but I have seen the external cabinets that Gabriel mentioned.

It surprises me that you have a hard disk that runs at 10,000 Rpm but you don't know the advantages of it. Last time I checked, they are significantly more expensive for the same size drives. Regardless, the biggest advantage is the seek time reduction. I believe the average seek time for drives running at 7,200 Rpm is 8.5 ms, and their faster brothers bring it down to ~4.8 ms, possibly lower (depending on the make). Mathematically, it makes a difference, but with web browsing, word processing, and even gaming, delays of single-digit milliseconds are hardly troubling. Faster is never a problem, but I can't convince myself to spring for these drives, budget conscious as I am.

[Skye]

One more thing:

You benchmarked the stripe sizes on office productivity, Internet content creation, and raw transfer speeds, but what about gaming? I would be willing to gamble that most enthusiasts seeking every ounce of speed (grams too, I suppose) are gamers. I think this line-up would be a bit more insightful if you tested a game or two as well, although it wouldn't have to be nearly as detailed as the graphics card reviews you put out.

If you are already testing for other purposes and have a lot of the equipment handy, maybe running a few tests on different stripe sizes would make a new mini-review, even if the system stats weren't identical to those in your tests here.

[reidy-]

A RAID 0 aray will only effect the levle loading speed's, not the FPS and that's what they are botherd about.
some gamer's spend some of their budget on RAID array's some just stick it back into their graphics card/ CPU, it all depends on what you want.

[Skye]

I guess that makes sense. I still think it would be worth it for me, though, because I do a lot of photo editing, but should most gamers even bother?

[Gabriel Torres]

Hi,

There is some performance difference, however it isn't so big as for someone editing large contents. It is the same thing with RAM memories. Sometimes a high-end memory will give a gamer only a very small performance gain, but they go for it anyway, in order to have "the fastest" machine around. For the average user, assembling a RAID system doesn't make sense, because of the cost. If you are using Vista, it makes more sense to buy a 2 GB pen drive and leave it permanently connected to your PC as a disk cache (ReadyBoost feature).

Cheers,
Gabriel.

[Skye]

The cost of having two smaller hard disks rather than one big one? It isn't that much more, is it? And if the motherboard already supports Raid...

Figuring out my preferred stripe size is another issue, though.

[Gabriel Torres]

Hum... Very interesting point...

Gabriel.