3TB Seagate RAID0 config. using ST3000DM001 vs ST3000VM002

[jose_ugs]

I'm going through some specs and trying to figure out which one is the "best" RAID0 3TB Seagate HDD to go to, having ML RAW workflows in mind of course:

ST3000DM001 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA3

vs

ST3000VM002 5900RPM 64MB Cache SATA3

Basically, the "only" difference is the RPM. I've heard that for those RAID0s the lower the RPM, the more "reliable" it is...
Any thoughts?

[adijiwa]

Well, I never heard about 'RAID0 with lower RPM HDDs is more reliable'.
But, personally, if it's about 7,2K vs 5,9K RPM, I would pick the faster one. And I always assume that RAID0 arrays are unreliable. It could fall apart at any moment. Make sure you have proper backup somewhere safe.

[reddeercity]

Well, I never heard about 'RAID0 with lower RPM HDDs is more reliable'.
But, personally, if it's about 7,2K vs 5,9K RPM, I would pick the faster one. And I always assume that RAID0 arrays are unreliable. It could fall apart at any moment. Make sure you have proper backup somewhere safe.

Raid-0 is very safe, yes you should alway Backup!
The key to having a safe & reliable raid
Buy matching hard drive, don't mix brands.
Always go with the fastest drive, with the largest
Cache.
But I would be a little unsure of 3TB drives
As a raid-0 , the max size I go is , 2TB .
I have found that 3TB drive are not
As fast as 2TB drives.
Personally I would built a raid-5 storage  (min. 4 drive)
& a Raid-0 as a render drive.
Raid-5 read/write is around 425-480 MB/s
Raid-0 r/w is around 170-200 MB/s.
 

[1%]

Raid0? Seriously? Why bother with any raid if you have no redundancy. The slight increase in speed vs actually increasing risk of failure x2... One drive failed on a striped volume... what now?

7200rpm drives without raid is what I'd go with.

Personally I would built a raid-5 storage  (min. 4 drive)

This if you have the money/controllers. Also you can go tape for long term storage+backup.

[RenatoPhoto]

Raid0? Seriously? Why bother with any raid if you have no redundancy. The slight increase in speed vs actually increasing risk of failure x2... One drive failed on a striped volume... what now?

I use two Raid 0 configurations, one for my storage area (2x2T 7200 rpm) and one my operating system (2x1T 7200 rpm).  I also have a couple of drives where I periodically do a backup of the storage and operating systems.  I think that 7200 rpm drives are now very reliable compared to a few years ago so I am willing to risk my operating system and my storage for faster performance.  I have been running like this for about a year without any problems.

[reddeercity]

I too have been on a raid-0 setup
On my MacPro & PC for 3 years now
And never had a problem.
Plus I run a USB 3.0 4TB raid-0 box on my
PC Laptop.
To ran a Raid-5 on a PC is easier because
Almost all PC board have a Raid-0, 5 controller
or I have seen raid controller for as little as $100.00

If you really want to edit or grade a raid is a must!
That's something that everyone should budget for
In there system, it's foolish to think other wise.

[1%]

If you really want to edit or grade a raid is a must!

I wouldn't say that. I guess for OS/scratch its a boon with the parallel access but if you store to raid 0 when 1 disk goes the ENTIRE volume goes and files may not be on the same disk, halving chances for recovery.

With the 3tb example you are out 6GB of data.

[ItsMeLenny]

I wanted to reply to this yesterday but couldn't figure out my login.

RAID0 is very safe, and won't even do anything speed wise.
RAID0 one hard drive breaks you lose everything. There is probably ways to recover, but why put yourself through the torture.

If you really want speed, you'd be better off getting a solid state drive.
And if you want a lot of speed, solid state drives in a RAID, but not RAID 0

[reddeercity]

Ever hear of backup! Why you people so afraid of raid-0,
Then run Raid-10 a mirrored raid-0, (needs 4 drive) so 2 drive can go down and
still have your data.(Many Server Still run Raid-10 for the OS)
Yes SSD are fast but very pricey for any thing over 256GB,
For the price of (2) 256GB SSD(about $540) you can by (4) 2TB 7200 drives
If raid-0 is so bad why are these guys sell raid-0 for video editing? 
http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid
I think they know something about raid's 

Edit: speed wise I have tested raid-0 at R/W 180-200/220-250 MB/s (2x2TB 7200 Seagate)
Single 7200 2TB R/W 120/125 ($120)
Single 10,000 600GB WD VelociRaptor read/write 135-140/140-150 ($160)
Raid 5 (4)2TB 7200 Seagate 6TB usable Read/Write 425/470
SSD Kingston Hyper X 256GB  Read/Write 220/250 MB/s ($270)
all tested with the Blackmagic speed disk programs on Mac & PC.

[1%]

Ever hear of backup! Why you people so afraid of raid-0,

Where to back up that much data regularly?

If raid-0 is so bad why are these guys sell raid-0 for video editing? 

That one isn't enterprise class

[Africashot]

Thanks for all the useful inputs here, I have yet to own any raid system since to date I have been, so to say, living on the bleeding edge... doing manual double back ups on drives I'd store in different locations for some of the most important stuff and simple single backups of everything else.
I do of course want to invest in something like this (right after I upgrade my workstation, buy a brushless gimbal, wireless follow focus, a few new primes, eventually upgrade my camera, get into flying drones, you get the point...) thus I'd really appreciate if someone could post a cheapo solution that works in terms of raid storage, nothing fancy, doesn't have to be the fort knox of hard drives, I guess anything can be better then the way I am doing it now...

[reddeercity]

I have this raid-0 box works well on my laptop on USB 3.0
http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1357292851 About $100
2 bay just add hard drives 

[Africashot]

Looks just like what I was looking for, thanks for sharing!

[jose_ugs]

@adijiwa
Lower RPM HDDs used to be more reliable, and i know i've read somewhere a whole article regarding 7200RPM RAID0 vs whatever low-RPM RAID0. That's why the wondering from my side

@reddeercity
I am thinking 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001 because currently it's rated top5 in chip.de's comparison, and i guess i "trust" them

So i'm about to go for 2 of these and test how RAID0 performs on my desktop. If the speed of RAID0 is not significant/worth for... i might go 1%'s way...
Btw, how about 3 of these stacked in a RAID0 ? 3 X speed?

[broch]

I know that decision has been made so I am not suggesting alternative setup
but
there is no contest what is faster SDD or two (even three) HDD 7200rpm in RAID0.
Samsung 840 PRO 550-520 MB/s 250GB ($200 a month ago)
Even in terms of reliability SDD is better than RAID0
combination of independent SDD (system), and single 1TB 7200rpm (files) will give you faster system. Size is one third of your wishes, but even with 1TB you need backup, more so with 3TB (would be a huge loss of data without backup). Nowadays SDD 250GB/1TB HDD 7200rpm cost below $300. And price will drop fast as 1TB SDD are on the market.
By the way SDD RAID0 (intel) can achieve 1800-1300 MB/s which currently on workstation has little value.

[reddeercity]

Samsung 840 PRO 550-520 MB/s 250GB ($200 a month ago)

How are you testing this ? or are you just quoting spec.
i have (5) SSD's all but one is on OS (2) on Mac & (2) on Windows 7 Pro, (1) Storage drive on pc laptop.
(4) are Kingstone Hyper X 240GB,
(1) is a Crucial M500 240GB
with real world testing Blackmagic Speed test,
Kingston Write/Read 250/250 MB/s
Cruial W/R 250/505 MB/s
Raid-0 (2x1TB 7200 rpm) on the Mac W/R 241/240 MB/s
So as you can see there really is no big speed differences
Until you get to raid-5 which is W/R 450/450 that on my Mac (4-2TB 7200 rpm)
So Money wise it still better to use Spindle hard drive for Storage and or Raid's
Then SSD's

By the way SDD RAID0 (intel) can achieve 1800-1300 MB/s which currently on workstation has little value.

That very Strange! how do you define "Little Value"
I see great value in having a raid-0 @ 1800-1300 MB/s Can't You !
Unless that raid-0 is only 512GB then that's to small.

[broch]

How are you testing this ? or are you just quoting spec.
i have (5) SSD's all but one is on OS (2) on Mac & (2) on Windows 7 Pro, (1) Storage drive on pc laptop.
(4) are Kingstone Hyper X 240GB,
(1) is a Crucial M500 240GB
with real world testing Blackmagic Speed test,
Kingston Write/Read 250/250 MB/s
Cruial W/R 250/505 MB/s
Raid-0 (2x1TB 7200 rpm) on the Mac W/R 241/240 MB/s
So as you can see there really is no big speed differences
Until you get to raid-5 which is W/R 450/450 that on my Mac (4-2TB 7200 rpm)
So Money wise it still better to use Spindle hard drive for Storage and or Raid's
Then SSD's
That very Strange! how do you define "Little Value"
I see great value in having a raid-0 @ 1800-1300 MB/s Can't You !
Unless that raid-0 is only 512GB then that's to small.

1) you can use CrystalDiskMark (plus some more) if you want to test your SSD
2) I mentioned specifically Samsung 840 PRO series 256GB/more - currently fastest SSD, much faster than these SSDs you mentioned. As far as reviews go, it seems that Samsung is close to the maximum of current solid state disk performance.
3) about "little value" - you (I assume standard workstation setup) do not have anything close installed (huge db?) to saturate such pipeline (forget about SATA III of course).
4) I would assume that you have proper setup of SSD and HDD to get this working with best performance.

[reddeercity]

I Host Web sites that Streams HD Media from 320p to 1080p  Sliverlight Smooth Streaming.
Plus i Broadcast Live 720p stream to each web site so i think my Sever Pipe line is quite heavy task.
Like i Said did (You) Test the SSD for Real world environment.
Reviews mean nothing until it in operation, because all System are not created Equal . 

[broch]

I mentioned workstation which is the original setup.
No, I am not interested in arguing how demanding your setup is.

I think that for video streaming you need cpu and ram plus good network. However latest mac with SSD/PCie gets 1GB/s write and 0.9GB/s reads in Blackmagic disk speed test,  PCIe 3.0 has specs (theoretical) 8GB/sec. Better though add 128GB RAM (LGA 2011 e.g. MSI) which for video streaming is more important than fastest disk

so get yourself an upgrade if you need it instead of asking about real-world speed tests because it does not matter what your setup can do.

[jose_ugs]

So, to sum it all up: I know about backing up, i'm not a Mac user so Windows7 all day with me, SSD's are too damn small and still pricey to think about SSD RAIDs and what else... I might just go for 2XST3000DM001, see what the workflow is like on a RAID-0 on these, and if it's worth it, buy a 3rd one for backups. If not, i'll use one for backup and work on the other... Using a SSD to work on is probably at lot faster, but also a lot tighter (240GB vs 3TB)...

There's just this one case, no one has a 3XHDD stacked in RAID-0?
I'm not interested in "expected specs" based on whatever... real time data would be appreciated, just like @reddeercity mentioned is most important

[reddeercity]

I did have a 3x hard drive in a raid-0 on a old windows server, but there is no speed increase,
Just more disk space. if it's in your budget and you are going to buy 3 HD maybe think about a
4th drive & made a raid-10 which is same speed as a raid-0 but is mirrored, so a exact copy as a backup
The Key to having a reliable raid is to make sure that all drive are the same band/type,
and if possible try and get Match pairs with serial # that are sequential.         

[1%]

heheh, 3x raid0 = 3x as likely to fail... the striping does I guess "double" performance from the specs but the raid 10 is more sane as you have backup for both drives. SSD doesn't make sense price wise as has been pointed out, belongs in a laptop more than a workstation. I also deal with SAS and scsi which aren't bad options if the damn controllers didn't cost an arm and a leg. Gotta remember that a lot of these rates are burst rates for consumer stuff like sata.. the enterprise stuff is sustained rate

[reddeercity]

yes I agree.
btw: my raid 5 box is SAS with a atto r380 card
I couldn't work with out it.

[jose_ugs]

@reddeercity sequential serial #'s is what i was thinking too Yesterday i heard the following from a guy dealing with raid's all day: He always picked the same drives in terms of rpm, cache, size... but from different manufacturers, why: because they won't fail at the same time and if you do raid0, it's important that they dont fail at the same time

[Cityeater]

To be honest, if you do RAID 0 then it doesn't make any difference if one drive or all of them fall over at the same time. You'll still lose the volume regardless.

From my own experience I tend to run RAID 10 using the intel storage controller RST. I only use Hitachi's and when they were still available Samsungs but YMMV. I tend to avoid the WD and Seagate consumer 7200rpm drives (the Barracudas and the Blues? ) because they  push some of the redundancy write/read features off their consumer drives and save them for the AV or enterprise drives. Although this isn't something I've researched for awhile. I may be tempted with the Blacks, Reds or the SVs at this point but I still just stick with Hitachi Deskstars (owned by WD now). If I could afford it I would probably look at the Ultrastars but I tend to try and order them from separate shops (say when I've done 6 at a time) because my fear with sequential serial # drives is they may all fall over at the same time, which is my nightmare. I never mix models though.
RAID 0 should increase your write and read speed plus you get the benefit of a volume with the combined size of the number of drives but obviously it is fragile to data loss should one of the drives fall over.Can work with odd number of drives and I think on some controllers you can expand the size of the volume by simply adding another drive and letting it rebuild but I'm not sure.
RAID 1 may increase your read speed (controller dependent) and provides a redundant drive in case of failure (also taking into account the ability to continue "up time" if its a mission critical volume or you operate a business) but you lose 50% of total drives capacity and a RAID 1 can also fall over despite the redundant drive. As in one drive drops out and, even though it shouldn't), pulls the whole array over forcing you into a lengthy rebuild. One advantage of RAID 1 is that you can pull a drive out and still access it on another computer (atleast using the Intel controller at either end).
RAID10 mirrors two pairs of drives and then stripes them between multiple twin arrays. Giving you some of the read/write benefits of RAID 0 along with some of the redundancy features of RAID 1. You need 4 drives and up but you only get 50% of the total capacity. For my money I find RAID 10 the most reliable for a Scratch or Project volume and I find the Intel RST software fairly easy to use.
No RAID (0,1,5,6,60,10 et al) is a replacement for a backup. RAIDs have a tendency to let you down when you least expect it and don't underestimate the rebuild times with larger drives on some of those more complicated RAID configurations. It can be epically long and if you're making a living with what's on the volume this can drive you nuts ( I speak from experience ).
Sorry if I'm just repeating what you already know but some of the info in here seemed a little incorrect and having watched RAID failures destroy valuable project data and footage I thought it might be useful to offer my perspective.
Best of luck ( and just to reinforce the point, No RAID is the equivalent of a regular backup).