RAID

[rswarkentin]

I was wondering what exactly is RAID. From my general understanding it has to do with the efficiency of transferring data from and to multiple hard drives. Does this mean for a single hard drive machine there is no need to worry about RAID. I'm looking at purchasing the NP 9261 and I am going to go with the 160GB Seagate Momentus 3GB/S SATA 300 7200RPM Hard Drive. I am not to sure what the different options for RAID mean or what I should go with. Is this even valid for a single harddrive. Also, next to the harddrive choice is says in brackets 9260. What does this mean? Is this a good hard drive to use for this machine. I am not too worried about space but it is important that I have a fast hard drive (7200 RPM).

[xpcdude]

I'v also posted this on a different thread .
RAID 0 (Performance)
Advantage:Approx. 70% faster than the single drive when reading and about 30% faster when writing.
Disadvantage: If one hard drive fails, all data is lost
Requires 2 drives.

RAID 1 (Reliability)
Advantage:If one hard drive fails, no data is lost
Disadvantages:Approximately 30% performance hit when writing to the array. Minimal penalty for reading.
Due to the fact that the contents of the first drive are stored identically on the second drive, the size of the array is the same size as a single hard drive -- the hard drives will write together, doubling the noise.
Requires 2 drives.

RAID 5
Advantages Highest Read data transaction rate,medium Write data transaction rate,kow ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data disks means high efficiency.good aggregate transfer rate

Disadvantages Disk failure has a medium impact on throughput,most complex controller design,difficult to rebuild in the event of a disk failure (as compared to RAID level 1),Individual block data transfer rate same as single disk
Requires 3 drives.

There you go :)

[rswarkentin]

So for my purpose RAID is pointless since I am only using 1 drive. What about the hard drive itself? Is that a good choice for this system. Like I said I am not to worried about space but I want access time to be faster so I want to go with 7200 RPM as opposed to 5400. How come it says 9260 in brackets next to the option for that specific hard drive? Does that make it better than the other options?

[xpcdude]

It means that the hard drive is the best one for the 9261,or the fastest (3 Gb/s).
Since you are planning to go for the 9261, I would suggest going with the 7200 rpm drives, for the best possible performance :)

[rswarkentin]

So you are saying for a single hd my best bet in terms of speed and decent storage space i should go with the 160GB Seagate Momentus 3GB/S SATA 300 7200RPM Hard Drive (9260). And this way I don't have to worry about any RAID configurations?

[xpcdude]

RAID is just a way to tie multiple HDDs so that they either look like a single drive,work as a backup or increase slightly the performance.
The Seagate Momentus provides enough stoirage for a typical user and has the best transfer speed supported by the 9261 (3 gb/s) :)