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VelociRaptors In RAID 5, A Case Study In Speed

hothardware.com — The team at HotHardware decided to RAID up not two but three WD VelociRaptor drives in a RAID 5 configuration with an Areca PCIe X8 hardware RAID card, to see what the numbers looked like. This is only a quick-take on read performance but it certainly gives you a sense of scale and what these drives are capable of in the right environment.

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  • incircolo, on 06/27/2008, -3/+11thanks for the review, i have never tested VelociRaptors hard drives
    • kidcodea, on 06/28/2008, -7/+33 drives? noobs... with money or connections...
      mediocrity rises to the top in this society...

      raid 5 needs more disks to achieve proper performance...
      a performance test with killer drives and a noob setup no one with half a brain would ever do...
    • megamod, on 06/28/2008, -1/+7"It was with a few of these questions in mind that we decided to RAID up not two but three WD VelociRaptor drives in a RAID 5"

      I can't believe they were even considering doing RAID 5 on JUST 2 hard drives. That would basically be like doing Raid 1. It would be nice to see them doing that test with 4 or 5 hard drives to see how much of a performance gain you can get by adding more hard drives.
  • Morshade, on 06/27/2008, -3/+5nice rev
  • starfocus03, on 06/27/2008, -3/+6helpful! I've never used them before...
  • vault, on 06/27/2008, -4/+26Any Mac Pro users thinking about installing a velociraptor, the sata and power connectors are not in the same spot as a standard 3.5" drive, so they don't line up with the Mac Pro's sleds...you need to do this to get it to work: http://www.barefeats.com/hard103.html scroll down to 'tricky install'
    • Ricochetbiscuit, on 06/27/2008, -2/+3Great info, thanks!
    • InorganicMatter, on 06/28/2008, -5/+3You've gotta be kidding. Talk about a huge disappointment. The most useful application of drives like this are in ultra-demanding server RAID-5 systems, and that kills off that entire arena.

      Just watch: the relabeled "server" version will have the industry-standard connectors on it, wait and see. Talk about a sneaky way to sock business customers for some extra dough.
      • vault, on 06/28/2008, -0/+7Well if it were truly demanding you'd probably use scsi to begin with. I see raptors as being mostly for gamers, a/v workstations, enthusiast/power users, etc.

        They probably will come out with a new version though...I was reading a while ago transintl is coming out with a bracket to work around this anyway.
      • KibibyteBrain, on 06/28/2008, -1/+7Enterprise with their money would opt for more, more reliable server grade drives in RAID 10 for a performance solution. RAID 5 is usually used for economy, not performance. To be quite frank, I don't even understand where this article is coming from using fast drives in RAID 5 to try to boost performance over other more effective and reliable methods. For a few home user geeks, this might have usefulness, but nowhere else I can foresee. Performance-oriented apps aren't going to want to crunch parity xors and everyone else would prefer cheaper drives for more/larger drives at the same cost.
      • Hortnon, on 06/28/2008, -2/+4@vault

        Fibre Channel SAS > * :)

        @kibibytebrain

        Exactly what I was thinking. I've analyzed many systems that have used RAID 5 exclusively, all together, for Oracle databases, then whined about performance being bad. Well, that's because RAID 5 works *to a degree* for performance, and that's for reads, not writes. Then you add in journaling which can bring an entire array to its knees. It's far better to go with multiple independant RAID 10 configurations to physically separate data and IO operations. The downside is that your 1.5 TB raw just turned to 750 GB usable...But it'll be far faster and recover from failure better.
      • Ricochetbiscuit, on 06/28/2008, -0/+1@Inorganic You're right, currently these new drives do not have an industry standard connector layout. They won't fit in a 2.5" sled for a standard hot-swap chassis config but I've heard WD is planning on coming out with a new model that will offer a standard (3.5" presumably) connector layout. These current models are really for enthusiast desktop/workstation types.
    • secleinteer, on 06/28/2008, -1/+3Bb bbb bbut it's a Mac! It's just supposed to work!
  • claycollins, on 06/27/2008, -2/+17I want one.
  • smurfz, on 06/27/2008, -4/+15I need one.
  • sega01, on 06/27/2008, -1/+7I would have liked to see an individual drive's performance, but raid 5 or not, they are fast drives.
  • semjaza, on 06/27/2008, -5/+2Great article.
  • jaybol, on 06/27/2008, -1/+39i want to see one get loose and eat Jeff Goldblum
  • mattnyc99, on 06/27/2008, -3/+2nice review
  • mejaredme, on 06/27/2008, -4/+2Interesting.
  • Rubab, on 06/28/2008, -3/+1I never used those before.. for me it is really useful article..
  • SVOboy, on 06/28/2008, -3/+8RAID!?!?!?!? /end scared bug noise
  • EarlOfLade, on 06/28/2008, -12/+19RAID 5 with 3 disks? What are these people? Plumbers?

    With 3 disks, you have a gutted RAID 5 that is really not useful for anything, not even a benchmark. Nobody runs a RAID 5 with 3 disks.
    • ExSlashdotter, on 06/28/2008, -4/+32Well you're sure as hell not running a RAID 5 with two disks...

      Three disks is the least amount of drives that you need for a spanned volume that allows you to maintain uptime in the case of a failure.

      Are 5 drives 'better' than 3? I suppose. But that doesnt mean a 3-drive raid5 config isnt useful in certain situations. I dont really see your point.

      (btw, i'm just a network admin for a $16B company)
      • Hortnon, on 06/28/2008, -7/+2RAID 5 is useless at 3 drives, no way around it. You'd probably get better performance off those 3 drives by having them independant, then separating data out between them (ex, OS on 1, software on 2, datafiles on 3). RAID5 starts to shine after 10 or so drives, because it just increases performance as you throw drives at it. But as I point out above...that only goes so far.
      • applemachome, on 06/28/2008, -1/+6@Hortnon

        Im pretty sure separating everything onto different drives completely negates any benefits of recoverability that RAID 5 has to offer.
    • TheObviousChild, on 06/28/2008, -3/+1True. Seems kinda pointless. I have a RAID0 set up for a gaming PC, but I haven't seen a game on this PC for a while and now I'm getting paranoid about losing all my pics and music. I'll probably backup, format, and setup a RAID1 this weekend. I've never actually had to recover a RAID'ed drive in Windows before. nForce should hopefully make it easy.
      • bipolarruledout, on 06/28/2008, -3/+0Windows software raid in Windows server works pretty well during disk failures and recovery but most of the raid chipsets really are not very good. This may have changed in the last few years. Intels raid chipsets are really quite impressive for the price but if your array every goes ***** up on these you might have problems. That and they don't move over to other controlers very well. With windows software raid you can easily move whole arrays over to differant machines or controlers without issue. I would test any cheap raid chipset for how it handles recovery before I use it for anything important. FYI there are quite a few hacks that let you use Windows software raid on XP, don't know about vista. The only downside is you can't boot off of raid 5 or 0 arrays but raid 1 is no problem.
    • ferrariman60, on 06/28/2008, -6/+2That's what I was thinking, why even run RAID 5 with less than 4 drives? I also run RAID 0, with daily backups of my docs/games/pics/music/etc on a single HDD. But again, why even do 5 with less than 4?
    • Firehed, on 06/28/2008, -0/+27What on earth are you talking about? A three-disk RAID5 array allows a single drive failure, gives you a speed increase over a single drive (though not quite as much as RAID0), doesn't lose 50% of the space like RAID1, and has a relatively low entry cost. Not everyone needs a hot spare, and the other benefits scale with the number of drives.
      • Hortnon, on 06/28/2008, -6/+2Why not RAID 0 those 3 drives, then do nightly backups to, like, a USB drive? Or RAID 0 two drives and backup to the third if you're so set on 3 drives...
    • bipolarruledout, on 06/28/2008, -2/+0The only way I would find it usefull is for scaleability... but then you need a really expensive raid card with migration. And if you're going to do that you might as well buy fast SCSI disks in raid 1 or cheaper sata disks with a larger capacity and call it done.
    • Y0tsuya, on 06/28/2008, -2/+3A 3 drive RAID5 doesn't really exercise anything. Lots of people use RAID5 with over 10 drives. Benchmarks with that type of setup is more useful than that pipsqueak in the article.
    • digitalarcanum, on 06/28/2008, -0/+6it's pretty obvious you've never worked in a datacenter before, huh? anything with three drives or more is set up with RAID 5. all other servers usually have a minimum of two drives and are set up in RAID 1. So what if you can't squeeze out that extra 10MB/s read performance or .1ms seek time. You've got fault tolerance and that's what's important in a business environment.
      • Hortnon, on 06/28/2008, -4/+2And those datacenters are cheapskates. They would get far better performance elsewhere.
      • luther70, on 06/28/2008, -1/+4Unless you are tuning for a Database server you don't give a rats ass about a slight improvement in performance. You care about having to replace a drive at 2 AM on a Sunday morning. If you have the budget you are not using internal storage anyways. You're boot and Data drives are on SAN.
      • Hortnon, on 06/28/2008, -2/+2And yet, here we are, in a thread about RAID5 performance.
    • ExSlashdotter, on 06/28/2008, -0/+4i wasnt talking about 'gaming machines' in my comment. i'm talking about for systems that would require the continuous uptime provided by raid5.

      if you're going to build a server out of a regular PC, most of them only have room for 4 sata or ide devices anyway. one for your OS, the other 3 in a raid5.

      raid5 doesnt care about speed. its also not a substitute for a backup regiment. it just affords you constant uptime in the event of a drive failure.
    • cgreentx, on 06/28/2008, -0/+6Clearly you miss the point of RAID 5. If performance was primary goal you would run 10 or 50. RAID 5 is about maximum space with redundancy.
    • Sidzilla, on 06/28/2008, -0/+3Raid 5 with three disks is useful in server environments for redundancy. It is useful to have that type of set up so that if a drive goes out you can replace it and rebuild the array without putting your entire company out of work for the time it would take to rebuild a server from bare metal. Not all servers need huge amounts of storage. Exchange server, for instance, has built in limitations on how large the databases may become, and putting that database on a big huge drive is a waste of space. Speed isn't usually limited on a network by the speed of the platters on the drives, so it's not an issue either. Someday you kids will learn that there are people that do real work with computers, not just games. Until then, go back to your mommy's basement and play WoW.
      Signed: I'm not a plumber and you are an elitist that really knows jack ***** about computers.
  • coolchu001, on 06/28/2008, -2/+2thats not even fast, my 2 WD6400AAKS in raid 0 does 160-170MB/s avg on HDtune...
    • Y0tsuya, on 06/28/2008, -1/+9Oops, no fault tolerance.
    • Muncher, on 06/28/2008, -1/+2I find it amusing how you’re bragging about your RAID 0 setup, despite it being slower than these VelociRaptors in RAID 5. And then concluding that they’re “not even fast.”
      • coolchu001, on 06/28/2008, -1/+2I'm not bragging, I'm comparing as to how wasteful it is to have 3 raptors and yet 2 640GB get close to the same performance and with 3 640GB it gets more than what these raptors can get and can also do Raid 5
      • Muncher, on 06/28/2008, -0/+2Wasteful, sure. But it’s fast, all right.
    • digitalarcanum, on 06/28/2008, -4/+3hurrrr... one of my drives is dead... no problem I'll replace it and rebuild the RAID durrr.... no wait.
      • coolchu001, on 06/28/2008, -1/+1Same goes for a single drive config.
    • wiggimt, on 06/28/2008, -1/+3I think you missed the point that RAID5 is naturally slower than RAID0. You aren't having to calculate parity blocks with RAID0, hence (relative) superior performance.
  • InfiniteNothing, on 06/28/2008, -1/+2I've always been more of a cheetah man myself
  • riven, on 06/28/2008, -4/+3Wow, nice shill comments here... and on every other article submitted by 'diggboss'.
  • kitsua, on 06/28/2008, -0/+3How loud is it though?

    I already have two Raptors in my machine alongside two Barracudas and even with a special padded case, a silent PSU and a Zalman fan the noise is still too high for my home studio setup. The extra speed is always nice if you're streaming lots of audio tracks and samples with realtime edits and processing but if it's super noisy it wouldn't be worth it in my case.
    • Ricochetbiscuit, on 06/28/2008, -0/+3They are actually dead silent. Seriously, quieter than most standard 7200 RPM drives that I've heard.
      • kitsua, on 06/28/2008, -0/+2Really? That's interesting.

        Thanks chum.
  • Aero347, on 06/28/2008, -3/+3Sweet- Vista will load in 1m 50s! compared to 2m!
    • Jaliyl, on 06/28/2008, -0/+1I have 2 old 36GB raptors in raid0 and vista never takes that long.
    • Hortnon, on 06/28/2008, -0/+2You've got other issues if it takes you 2 minutes to boot Vista...
  • tmalloy, on 06/28/2008, -1/+8What do you mean "not two but three WD VelociRaptor drives in a RAID 5 configuration"? You can't have RAID 5 with two drives.
    • blobdole, on 06/28/2008, -3/+0Poor sentence structure led to the confusion. It is supposed to read as such:

      not two but three WD VelociRaptor drives (a RAID 5 configuration)
  • bipolarruledout, on 06/28/2008, -2/+2A case study? Really? Don't you think thats a bit of an insult to real researchers? I'm going to newegg and buying the most expensive ***** I can find and calling it a case study. But I'm looking for grant money to fund my important research... anyone want to help me out?
  • ThinkBox, on 06/28/2008, -1/+4Awesome!

    Wait,.... this is on Digg?

    What is it, 2005?

    Good Tech news on Digg?? NANI NANI?
    • Brassbud, on 06/28/2008, -2/+1Don't worry, they were Obama's HDDs ;)
  • veruus, on 06/28/2008, -0/+2Well, it's a good thing they didn't try RAID5 with one or two disks, isn't it? For the next round of testing, try RAID0 w/ 4 or 5 of those bad boys.
  • FuckXboxx, on 06/28/2008, -2/+4If you care about this article....you're managing a SAN in an IT-budget-deprived company that would have everyone on dial-up if the person in charge of purchasing had it his way....

    Keep dreaming :P
  • exabytes16, on 06/28/2008, -0/+1Mmmm, why are the burst and average stated in the article lower than the screenshot? I suppose it was hitting the cache if they did actually realize 598MB/sec since that's absurdly high.
    • exabytes16, on 06/28/2008, -0/+1Failure. I intended to say that the burst and average are lower in the article.
      • Ricochetbiscuit, on 06/28/2008, -0/+1HD Tach showed Average Burst of 598. HDTune showed lower. Look again...
  • Guitarzan, on 06/28/2008, -1/+1Velociraptors: A Case Study in Speed.

    That's what I read and became ecstatic. ***** selective reading.
  • virtualball, on 06/28/2008, -0/+1What, no mention of xkcd yet?!?‽‽!!!oneone!!!interrobang‽
  • Dipsett, on 06/28/2008, -0/+0I wanna see that with some SSD's.
  • azka2006, on 06/28/2008, -0/+0I have AutoRAID Server, is it the using the same RAID you are talking about ?
  • jasonh1234, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1So who wants to try one of these in a laptop without the heatsink? :-)
  •  

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