Does it make sense to use RAID with 2xWD RE2-GP in an HTPC?

Cirkus · Post by **Cirkus** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 4:55 am

After getting some good advice here I consider going for one or two WD Green Power drives in my HTPC.

Does it make sense to use two RE-2 GP drives in a RAID setup instead of two normal GP drives in a normal two drive setup?

If I go for a RAID setup I will use Intel Matrix Storage to configure RAID mirroring for the system partition (with OS and important data) and RAID striping for the other partition. This should give me some protection to data loss on the system partition and increased performance for the other partition. My father uses the same setup in this desktop computer and it works great.

Is there any drawback with the RE2-GP drive compared to the GP drive except for the higher price? Is for example the noise level comparable?

In the review of RE2-GP at Tech Report ( http://techreport.com/articles.x/13578/1 ) it says that the RAID edition of the GP drive has something called "Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF), which detects and compensates for the ambient vibrations typical of multi-drive environments". This sounds like a good thing when mounting two drives in fixed drive cage. If I instead purchase a normal GP drive now, will there be any issues adding a second GP drive later to the same fixed drive cage? I have heard of people having trouble with vibrations when having two similar drives in the same drive cage.

Cirkus

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:41 am

Cirkus wrote:Does it make sense to use two RE-2 GP drives in a RAID setup instead of two normal GP drives in a normal two drive setup?

If I go for a RAID setup I will use Intel Matrix Storage to configure RAID mirroring for the system partition (with OS and important data) and RAID striping for the other partition.

What errors are you protecting against by mirroring? The problem with most software based "RAID" is that the mostly likely source of errors is not the individual drives. Striping is useful in some limited situations, but generally not worth the trouble.

Realistically the anser is, no, it doesn't make sense.

Cirkus · Post by **Cirkus** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:09 am

QuietOC wrote:What errors are you protecting against by mirroring? The problem with most software based "RAID" is that the mostly likely source of errors is not the individual drives. Striping is useful in some limited situations, but generally not worth the trouble.

Realistically the anser is, no, it doesn't make sense.

Thank you for your answer.

I am thinking like this: I will probably need two drives in my HTPC to get enough storage capacity. With two drives, I can very easy protect my system partition from a drive failure with mirroring, i.e. I will not have to reinstall the operating system in the event of a drive failure. In addition, with striping I will get better performance on large file copying (copying movie files etc) on the rest of the drive.

According to reviews of the WD GP drives on newegg.com it seems that these drives have a slightly higher failure rate than the best 3.5" drives. Mirroring will help to preserve my data in this matter.

In addition I am thinking that the "Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF)" feature of the RE2-GP could be useful for limiting vibration when having two drives mounted close to each other.

Cirkus

aztec · Post by **aztec** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 11:07 am

I thought the RE2 had a lower rated failure rate than consumer line GP drives as these are intended for Enterprise use.

Or are they differentiated simply by the longer 5-year warranty?

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 12:02 pm

aztec wrote:I thought the RE2 had a lower rated failure rate than consumer line GP drives as these are intended for Enterprise use.
Or are they differentiated simply by the longer 5-year warranty?

Most probably only difference is in factory burn in test time and TLER being enabled.

Using one shop for determining reliability is worthless, shipment to shop might have been handled badly or some workers in shop itself might handle them carelessly.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:13 pm

For a home HTPC, I wouldn't bother with the RE drives over the standard GP drives. If you're going for increased data security (in the event of hard drive failure), then RAID1 is the best bet. If you're simply going for the maximum data storage, then simply use the disks separately.

The Intel Matrix RAID will handle RAID1 without any trouble. What do you want the second partition for? I can't really see too many cases where you'd saturate disk performance in an HTPC (unless you're mutitasking the system heavily).

Cirkus · Post by **Cirkus** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:17 am

Nick Geraedts wrote:For a home HTPC, I wouldn't bother with the RE drives over the standard GP drives. If you're going for increased data security (in the event of hard drive failure), then RAID1 is the best bet. If you're simply going for the maximum data storage, then simply use the disks separately.

The Intel Matrix RAID will handle RAID1 without any trouble. What do you want the second partition for? I can't really see too many cases where you'd saturate disk performance in an HTPC (unless you're mutitasking the system heavily).

I would use the second partition for things I don't need RAID1 for. I would like to have the increased data security of RAID1 for the OS installation so I don't have to reinstall everything in the event of a drive failure, but for the rest of the drive I accept the risk because I need the extra space.

With Intel Matrix Storage I don't think you can use the second partition as a normal non-raid partition. You have to select a raid mode and then RAID0 is probably the most sensible one, even though striping is not strictly necessary. I am not 100% of this but I will check it up.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:33 am

I think you're right about not being able to use the rest of the space as "normal" partitions. You'd have to run a mixed RAID1 and RAID0 environment on the drives. Again - I don't think the RE drives would make a difference.

One thing I would recommend doing first, however, is enabling TLER on the drives for both reads and writes. You can find the utility on the net and make yourself a bootable DOS floppy or CD with it.

Cirkus · Post by **Cirkus** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:40 am

Nick Geraedts wrote:I think you're right about not being able to use the rest of the space as "normal" partitions. You'd have to run a mixed RAID1 and RAID0 environment on the drives. Again - I don't think the RE drives would make a difference.

One thing I would recommend doing first, however, is enabling TLER on the drives for both reads and writes. You can find the utility on the net and make yourself a bootable DOS floppy or CD with it.

If I have understood it correctly, TLER should only be enable for drives in a non-raid configuration. So if I purchase normal GP drives and use them in a raid array, I should disable TLER.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 12:50 pm

Ack... no - the other way around. TLER is designed for use in RAID situations, and comes enabled by default on RE drives. If you want to use RE drives in a non-RAID configuration (don't know why you would), then you want to disable TLER.

TLER helps prevent the RAID controller from prematurely dropping a drive form a RAID array in the event of an error. It gives the drive the ability to tell the controller: "Wait - I've had an error. I'm trying to fix it. If you haven't heard back from me in 7 seconds, kick me."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limit ... r_Recovery

Note the recommended settings for use in a RAID environment.

Does it make sense to use RAID with 2xWD RE2-GP in an HTPC?

Does it make sense to use RAID with 2xWD RE2-GP in an HTPC?

Re: Does it make sense to use RAID with 2xWD RE2-GP in an HT

Re: Does it make sense to use RAID with 2xWD RE2-GP in an HT

Re: Does it make sense to use RAID with 2xWD RE2-GP in an HT