WD Gold test + RAID

[tacoshy]

Well I have an special project upcoming in which I just wanted to test the WD Gold 4TB HDD. As it is a server HDD I not also want to know how fast it performs but also how loud it is and if it actually has a use for gaming PC's because a price difference to WD Black is not existing and the Gold has twice the cache.
As it is a server based HDD I understand that it is more reliable in a RAID. I just want to use it for games in RAID (with another WD Gold 4TB) then and thinking about replacing my 2TB 850 Evo with it so I have at least a use for it without reselling it.
The Problem is that I have no information about the loss risk of the RAID array in RAID-0 with server based HDD's and was thinking to maybe just run it in RAID-1 then which means I still can read games faster but have "no" risk of loosing the array. The inbetween solution would be of course to run it in RAID-10 (yes my MoBo supports RAID-10) but I'm not sure if I want to buy 4x HDD.

What do you think?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Why? It's not going to make Games load any faster then they already can via a somewhat fast drive, such as WD Black. I'd just get a 4 or 6 TB WD Black and call it a day.

Get rid of your SSD? Why, HDD Raid is never as fast as an SSD like that. The SSD helps make the ensure OS "fluid smooth"; no HDD can do that.

[tacoshy]

Originally posted by Bad_Motha:

Why? It's not going to make Games load any faster then they already can via a somewhat fast drive, such as WD Black. I'd just get a 4 or 6 TB WD Black and call it a day.

Get rid of your SSD? Why, HDD Raid is never as fast as an SSD like that. The SSD helps make the ensure OS "fluid smooth"; no HDD can do that.

First my OS is not on the 2TB 850 Evo, its on a 1TB 960 Pro. I also have a 4TB WD Black for personal Stuff and the 850 Evo for games but it is to 95% full and some games even are on the WD Black.
As I said the prices of WD Gold is same partwise even cheaper (150€ for 4TB) then WD Black. It has mor cache and is slightly faster. I just have no idea how loud the Gold is. But once I tested the WD Gold I dont want to just trasj it so I thinking to fix my low volume space with the WD Gold and as it should much profit from RAID intending to use it in RAID as it should have way faster read speed.
If it is fast enough for me for games I thinking to use the 850 Evo in my secondary computer as 2nd SSD.

So all I wanted to know if someone has an idea how stable the RAID-0 array is with WD Gold and if you would run it in RAID-1 or even RAID-10 to profit most of the speed with lowest risk of loosing the data when loosing the RAID array.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

WD Gold + Raid will just be a complete waste; but whatever, I guess u'll have to find out the hard way.

[tacoshy]

Originally posted by Bad_Motha:

WD Gold + Raid will just be a complete waste; but whatever, I guess u'll have to find out the hard way.

maybe it will be a waste I just going to buy it to test it and compare it against a black for my own. So your suggestion is then to trash 2 WD Gold instead of using them?
But well still didnt awnsered the question. I didnt asked if it is a waste running it in RAID just what you would think is the most efficient RAID to run it in.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I would just do 2x Drives in RAID-0 if you want more speed; just don't put anything on there you can't afford to lose. I mean its just Games, then no big deal, right...

[Washell]

You don't need reliability for content you can freely re-download again.

If you're in the sticks with poor download speeds, 4G deployment is ramping up, 5G is around the corner and LEO low latency/high speed internet satellites constellations are being launched as we speak. Within a few years, you'll probably be in my spot. 5TB of space, less than 1TB used, because why bother to save locally what you can download, stream, or safeguard/backup online.

But to answer your questions:
RAID 0 is less safe. One volume, two disks. If one fails, everything is gone
RAID 1 is safeish, One disk fails, the other keeps going. There's little to no performance benefit to games, because it does nothing to seek times and 4k transfers.
RAID 0+1 is just a waste of good hardware with 4 disks, go RAID 5

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well RAID-0 is the only way you're gonna get speed out of it.
Otherwise you're just doing for the sake or reliability, which for that to be effective, you'd want RAID-5

[tacoshy]

well I know what the differen RAID's do but thank you for the info Washell. I was thinking about RAID-10 to speed it up like with RAID-0 but also have redundantcy of RAID-1 and a could possible recover the array.
But yeah Bad-Motha you right with who would care with lost game installments. Only think I could really lose would be the savefiles I cant save in the cloud.
So RAID-0 it is. What do you think how high the failing risk going to be in RAID-0 with serverbased HDD? Never tried to run them in RAID outside of a NAS.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

The save files are stored on C Drive

[Washell]

Originally posted by tacoshy:

So RAID-0 it is. What do you think how high the failing risk going to be in RAID-0 with serverbased HDD? Never tried to run them in RAID outside of a NAS.

HDD's are funny. There will always be a small fraction that fails within the first few months of use. It's literally impossible to make a prediction given the sample size involved is two. Based on the statistics of the study linked below, you'd want to run both drives solo for 6 months to a year to get past the initial hump of unreliability, and only then put them in RAID, assuming they still live.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Lastly, server based is more a marketing term and relating to the cache sizes and such than that it's about reliability. All components of HDD's are really, truly well developed and once outside the low-end budget range, differences are marginal.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Don't mix SSD with HDD, it's not worth it, and you will just regret wasting your time doing it, pretty much pointless in trying to raid a SSD drive with a Mechanical HDD in a Raid 0/10 array.

The hard drive will simply hold back the SSD's drive if raided with it.
The two modes you are looking at are Striped, and mirrored.

[tacoshy]

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Don't mix SSD with HDD, it's not worth it, and you will just regret wasting your time doing it, pretty much pointless in trying to raid a SSD drive with a Mechanical HDD in a Raid 0/1/10 array.

The hard drive will simply hold back the SSD's drive if raided with it.
The two modes you are looking at are Striped, and mirrored.

never said I want to mix it with a SSD. I want to run 2 WD Gold in Raid-0 thought about running 4 WD Gold in Raid-10

And like I said I know what different RAID modes are and do.

Normally you RAID up a cheap SSD with a HDD to extend the cache but with 128MB cache on the WD Gold I seriosly doubt that this is necessary.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It's still "mixing" of Drives non the less; some SATA Chipsets just will not be able to handle your SSD getting full performance, while also doing PCIE M.2 + HDDs in RAID, it might turn out to be too much for a one chipset to handle.

Best bet is perhaps get a high quality PCIE SATA RAID Controller Card and put the HDDs on that instead.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Originally posted by tacoshy:

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Don't mix SSD with HDD, it's not worth it, and you will just regret wasting your time doing it, pretty much pointless in trying to raid a SSD drive with a Mechanical HDD in a Raid 0/1/10 array.

The hard drive will simply hold back the SSD's drive if raided with it.
The two modes you are looking at are Striped, and mirrored.

never said I want to mix it with a SSD. I want to run 2 WD Gold in Raid-0 thought about running 4 WD Gold in Raid-10

And like I said I know what different RAID modes are and do.

Normally you RAID up a cheap SSD with a HDD to extend the cache but with 128MB cache on the WD Gold I seriosly doubt that this is necessary.

Sorry about that, I thought that what you wanted to do, it would work out for you to set SSD to AHCI, and putting HDD to Raid 0/1, but I can't say it will be any better than a SSD, but I say check out some pcie stat raid controller card, that Bad_motha mention, about doing it that way.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes if you try doing this just from what SATA are on the Motherboard, then u need to look in BIOS or refer to Motherboard Manual and see which Ports allow which Modes. As a single non-RAID Drive, u'll want to keep as AHCI by itself. Then determine which port is best for that, based around what all ports support RAID.