Solved RAID on laptops?

cereberus · Mar 2, 2023

Does anybody use Raid on a laptop?

I have two identical nvme drives and I could set them up as Raid 0 (striped mode) to allegedly get extra performance, but if one drive fails, you lose everything. You would have to have regular external backups.

Raid 1 mirroring is more robust i.e. if one drive fails, you have an exact copy (sort of like a live clone). Downside is you lose 50% of your storage capacity.

I just do not see enough benefit to choose either unless I put very large (2TB+) drives in laptop.

pparks1 · Mar 2, 2023

Personally I wouldn't do RAID, either 0 or 1. With Raid 0 unless you have a very specific use case where throughput will make a noticeable improvements, it's just adding complexity. Sure, benchmarks will improve, but real world OS running, and app loading won't improve to the point where you can measure the change with a stopwatch.

Raid 1 is great for a server, where you cannot afford to have downtime if a drive fails. For normal use, the biggest likelyhood of wanting a second copy is usually as backup.. So if you got malware, or deleted something permanently, you would be able to get it back. But with a RAID 1 mirror, the malware and deletion happens on both drives at the same time, so it effectively doesn't provide you with much.

FrancoDT · Mar 2, 2023

I have RAID 0 in one of mine only because it's an Alienware and that seems to be their most common configuration and only choice in most of their machines. Been a couple years but they didn't give many options/choices for some of their laptops.

Haydon · Mar 2, 2023

FWIW, I experimented with Storage Spaces which is MS' version of RAID. I ran it in a 2-way mirror configuration for use as a backup medium, if 1 disk dies then simply replace the dead disk, which is of course very reassuring and very convenient.

However, the Storage Spaces configuration was extremely sensitive to the slightest imperfection of any one of the 2 disks, and although it still works fine, seeing all sorts of yellow triangles and warnings is unnerving, especially when it comes to a backup medium which is supposed to be your reliable fallback recourse. Also, as noted, if malware hits, both disks are affected, i.e. there is zero hardening against that kind of attack vector. So, I rotated my backup media and it turned out that Storage Spaces considered the configuration as a local disk (like C:) and it was always a big hassle to disconnect/reconnect.

So, the cost/benefit did not work out for me > I ditched Storage Spaces

PerpetualCycle · Mar 3, 2023

I have run 2 SSD in RAID 0 for years. SSD and NVME SSD are pretty reliable so I don't think that is too big of a worry, though if the data is critical you should always make backups regularly with RAID 0. RAID 0 can buy you performance ins sequential access, but not random (iops) access. It can potentially reduce iops.

RAID 1 , while redundant, has the drawback that if data is silently corrupted at write, both disks may end up with the corruption. It really is meant to protect against a disk failure.

So, I keep my local backups on SSD RAID 0 drives and frequently copy golden ones to external SSD as backups of backups, which are sequential. There isn't much justification for yachting else IMO.

Megahertz · Mar 4, 2023

I once had (2011) two WD Black 500G in RAID 0 array. It gave me a performance boost. I gave up the day one drive failed in 2014 and I installed a small SSD (128G). I had a backup so I didn't loose anything but time.
With two identical NVMe drives on a RAID 0 array you will see the increase of speed only on the benchmark test but you won't noticed the speed gain under normal use.
In my opinion, don't put them on RAID 0.

cereberus · Mar 4, 2023

Thanks everybody for your views - pretty much lines up with my perception that Raid is rather pointless on a laptop with only two drives, and adds risk for minimal gain.

I shall mark this solved.

jimbo45 · Mar 5, 2023

cereberus said:
Does anybody use Raid on a laptop?

I have two identical nvme drives and I could set them up as Raid 0 (striped mode) to allegedly get extra performance, but if one drive fails, you lose everything. You would have to have regular external backups.

Raid 1 mirroring is more robust i.e. if one drive fails, you have an exact copy (sort of like a live clone). Downside is you lose 50% of your storage capacity.

I just do not see enough benefit to choose either unless I put very large (2TB+) drives in laptop.

Hi folks

I have 2X 6TB drives connected to a laptop via a 4 port SATA->USBC (powered) adaptor. I run these 2 HDD's as a 12 TB RAID 0 array -- using the software RAID on a Linux host (mdadm). You could on Windows use storage spaces to achieve similar. I think Storage spaces work with external drives.

The RAID 0 is extremely fast - I use the 2 X 6TB disks for backups, multi-media storage and for running a whole slew of VM's. The RAID 0 makes running thes VM's from the external HDD's very efficient.

Risk for me is worth it as I have plenty of backups stored on a NAS. If you use Enterprise quality HDD's i.e those with at least 7200 RPM with a fast decent sized cache then these are very reliable. Over the last 6 years Ive probably only lost 1 HDD. !!!

Another advantage with Linux software Raid is that with RAID 0 you can use a mixture of different sized disks and therefore use the whole space. Other RAID systems often will only use the smallest HDD size in the case of HDD's with different capacities.

It's "Risk to reward ratio". Depends on what you want to do. "Raiding old HDD's" IMO is a lot better than having a whole slew of individual disks - especially if you have a load of multi-media where libraries can get quite large. I have round 3 - 4 TB of music files for starters.

I think though RAID of any sort isn't worth it for SSD's or Nvme's -- speed of those running natively should be perfectly adequate .

Aggregating as "JBOD" (Just a Bunch of Disks) though could be a possibility - but for that you'd probably need an external 2 or 4 bay storage device. Some of those boxes also have RAID as a possibility - but often hardware RAID is implemented very poorly when cheap cards are used so IMO often on non enterprise quality gear it's best avoided.

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus · Mar 5, 2023

jimbo45 said:
Hi folks

I have 2X 6TB drives connected to a laptop via a 4 port SATA->USBC (powered) adaptor. I run these 2 HDD's as a 12 TB RAID 0 array -- using the software RAID on a Linux host (mdadm). You could on Windows use storage spaces to achieve similar. I think Storage spaces work with external drives.

The RAID 0 is extremely fast - I use the 2 X 6TB disks for backups, multi-media storage and for running a whole slew of VM's. The RAID 0 makes running thes VM's from the external HDD's very efficient.

Risk for me is worth it as I have plenty of backups stored on a NAS. If you use Enterprise quality HDD's i.e those with at least 7200 RPM with a fast decent sized cache then these are very reliable. Over the last 6 years Ive probably only lost 1 HDD. !!!

Another advantage with Linux software Raid is that with RAID 0 you can use a mixture of different sized disks and therefore use the whole space. Other RAID systems often will only use the smallest HDD size in the case of HDD's with different capacities.

It's "Risk to reward ratio". Depends on what you want to do. "Raiding old HDD's" IMO is a lot better than having a whole slew of individual disks - especially if you have a load of multi-media where libraries can get quite large. I have round 3 - 4 TB of music files for starters.

I think though RAID of any sort isn't worth it for SSD's or Nvme's -- speed of those running natively should be perfectly adequate .

Aggregating as "JBOD" (Just a Bunch of Disks) though could be a possibility - but for that you'd probably need an external 2 or 4 bay storage device. Some of those boxes also have RAID as a possibility - but often hardware RAID is implemented very poorly when cheap cards are used so IMO often on non enterprise quality gear it's best avoided.

Cheers
jimbo

I was only talking about whether it is worth doing it on a laptop with two drives.

jimbo45 · Mar 5, 2023

cereberus said:
I was only talking about whether it is worth doing it on a laptop with two drives.

Not sure in that case how Windows would boot from this type of config unless there was a hardware RAID card in the laptop with a boot loader on it.

But for typical laptops -- as you have posted -- not worth it.

Cheers
jimbo

Solved RAID on laptops?

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Syzygy

My Computers

Wish to be flying

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computer

Similar threads