A PC configured with RAID1... slower than a regualr PC?

[arsie]

Say there was 2 computers exactly the same.

One was RAID1 hard drive configuration.

The second, a regular dual hard drive PC.

My question is, does the RAID1 configuration actually make the PC slower since everything you do needs to be done twice?

 

[Yeti]

From everything I've seen, they should be about the same speed. Theoretically the system with RAID1 should be faster for reading data because the redundant data can be read from both drives at the same time.

 

[arsie]

^^are you sure about that? I know RAID0 is normally faster because it combines 2 drives together and lets you read from both at the same time.

RAID1 however, i beleive has no effect on reading speed and only uses the second drive for a 1:1 real-time image of the main drive. It doesnt read off of the image drive. Can anyone confirm this please?

 

[Yeti]

RAID1 however, i beleive has no effect on reading speed and only uses the second drive for a 1:1 real-time image of the main drive. It doesnt read off of the image drive. Can anyone confirm this please?

That is correct for the most part, but if you think about it writing will take the normal amount of time because it has to write to both drives simultaneously. When reading, though, the data is there on both drives so it can read half the data from one drive and half the data from the other just like in RAID0. I don't know if the performance completely reflects that but thats the theory. If I'm wrong someone please correct me .

 

[Cromewell]

I think it's like a 30% read performance increase, not up to the ~60% from RAID0

 

[Praetor]

My question is, does the RAID1 configuration actually make the PC slower since everything you do needs to be done twice?

No.
1. If you've got the drives connected on separate channels (like it should be), definitely no.
2. If for some reason you decided to connect them on the same channel then it would be slower (as it would be if you didnt have RAID)

Theoretically the system with RAID1 should be faster for reading data because the redundant data can be read from both drives at the same time.

Its a bit faster yes dunno if it'll be end-user noticeable though.

I think it's like a 30% read performance increase, not up to the ~60% from RAID0

If RAID0 even reaches that for average users