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**Praetor** · 03-30-2005, 04:21 PM

RAID0 - [Pure] Striping

RAID0 is simply an implementation of parity spread across multiple drives.
The advantage of RAID0 is that you have improved performance (depending on what you intend to do with the drives) however the downside is that (a) your capacity is that of the smallest drive in the array time the number of drives and (b) there are now two (or more) points of failure for the array (each of the drives can fail, taking down the entire array rendering data on all drives as toast).
RAID0 is really only benificial when doing sustained (preferably sequential) IO operations. To explicitly say it, you will not see an improvement in random access -- so dont expect any improvement in video game performance.
To preempt RAID0 fanatics/fanboys, consider this first case,

The above image illustrates the potential for a RAID0 system and is what RAID0 fanatics like to think happens everywhere, all the time. When reality kicks, in the above benchmark is done illustrating maximum sustained throughput. Now when we take the same benchmark and look at office applications,

This shows, as expected, that a RAID0 configuration can (and as shown, does) lead to improved performance in office applications. Do note however that the performance advantage is significantly reduced as compared to the maximum/theoretical throughput. Looking at content creation benchmarks (which typically involve larger IO operations and as such, RAID0 benifits should be slightly more observable),

While one cant say that there is a benifit for using RAID0, it is, again, not as significant as the theoretical values. Now let's look at video gaming performance,

It's quite readily apparent that video game performance yields virtually no performance gains. Thus, one can state with a high degree of confidence, short of using applications that involve sustained file transfers (say as a file server that sends and receives CD-sized images or larger) than there will not be any worthwile performance gains. It should be noted however that for scenarios where RAID0 may be useful, there are (a) usually redundancy requirements or (b) better RAID options
A minimum of two drives is required

Lastly, by definition, RAID0 shouldnt be considered RAID simply because there is no redundancy whatsoever (i.e., fault tolerance is zero-drives)

03-30-2005, 04:21 PM	#3 (permalink)
Praetor Administrator Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canada Age: 25 Posts: 19,954	*RAID0 - [Pure] Striping* RAID0 is simply an implementation of parity spread across multiple drives. The advantage of RAID0 is that you have improved performance (depending on what you intend to do with the drives) however the downside is that (a) your capacity is that of the smallest drive in the array time the number of drives and (b) there are now two (or more) points of failure for the array (each of the drives can fail, taking down the entire array rendering data on all drives as toast). RAID0 is really only benificial when doing sustained (preferably sequential) IO operations. To explicitly say it, you will not see an improvement in random access -- so dont expect any improvement in video game performance. To preempt RAID0 fanatics/fanboys, consider this first case, The above image illustrates the potential for a RAID0 system and is what RAID0 fanatics like to think happens everywhere, all the time. When reality kicks, in the above benchmark is done illustrating maximum sustained throughput. Now when we take the same benchmark and look at office applications, This shows, as expected, that a RAID0 configuration can (and as shown, does) lead to improved performance in office applications. Do note however that the performance advantage is significantly reduced as compared to the maximum/theoretical throughput. Looking at content creation benchmarks (which typically involve larger IO operations and as such, RAID0 benifits should be slightly more observable), While one cant say that there is a benifit for using RAID0, it is, again, not as significant as the theoretical values. Now let's look at video gaming performance, It's quite readily apparent that video game performance yields virtually no performance gains. Thus, one can state with a high degree of confidence, short of using applications that involve sustained file transfers (say as a file server that sends and receives CD-sized images or larger) than there will not be any worthwile performance gains. It should be noted however that for scenarios where RAID0 may be useful, there are (a) usually redundancy requirements or (b) better RAID options A minimum of two drives is required Lastly, by definition, RAID0 shouldnt be considered RAID simply because there is no redundancy whatsoever (i.e., fault tolerance is zero-drives) __________________ ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP, Q6600@3.7 / ASUS P5ND, E6400@3.8 4GB OCz Platinum XTC 8500 / 4GB CorsairXMS2 6400 5x500GB Seagate 7200.10 / 2x500 Seagate 7200.10 OCz 8800GTX 768MB @ 630/800 / 2x Galaxy 8800GT SLI Last edited by Praetor; 04-17-2005 at 09:56 PM.