Hi Chaps,

Been reading an article on RAID. http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=29 these chaps seem to think that it's a bad idea for desktop-level boxes. The overall theme is that disks are very reliable, cheap i.e. (commoditity RAID), isn't and that the extra complexity is not a gauruntee for anything or worth the hassle.

What do you guys think? I've only used RAID on one machine at home

Backups are still needed if you use RAID, and that's the primary mistake that people make (thinking if they have RAID, they can skip backups).

That said, if you don't need to keep your machine running through a disk failure (e.g., you have a home web server), then you probably don't need RAID.

RAID-0 is another issue altogether, since it's not actually providing redundancy. If you need high performance I/O - you're handling large amounts of data regularly - RAID-0 can be useful. Otherwise it too is just an unnecessary expense.

I kind of like RAID-0 for desktops. It's a lot less risky than, say, overclocking your CPU and GPU for a little extra kick, IMHO.

I use raid 0 at home for my desktop for performance, and raid 1 on my server. I think its a good idea. Honestly, I am really bad about backups, and its nice to know that a drive dying wont loose the important data. True, if my box gets rooted and sombody wipes shit out, or if I just do somthing stupid, i can still loose stuff, but that has proven to happen alot less than drive failures


If i had the money to spare, I would build another box for offsite backup, and it would probally have raid 1 as well. either way, any backup system I implement needs to be totally automated if im going to remember to do it

RAID for desktops is ok but not always ok to use. Yes they add complexity and adds more problems to the computer. Hard drives added to the array needs to have its cache turned off to make the data more consistent.

I suggest RAID-10 for desktops because it can access two files at the same time and provides higher read and write throughput when needed and at the same time provide redundancy.

Today's hard drives are more matured but will eventually fail.

I have not yet used RAID because never see the need.