Raid 0 vs non-Raid setup

[Fonze]

I currently run a Raid 0 setup on my BTV box. I'm starting to wonder if it is worth it to use raid with BTV. I'm currently using HDs that are sort of old, so I was thinking of replacing them with much faster SATA HDs and either get a new Raid card to run the SATA Raid or just get 1 hd and get rid of the raid setup.

I mostly notice performance degrading when recordings start and when showsqueeze starts the WMV index cycle on a show. This usually causes BTV Link to shutter until it finally finishes.

so, does raid 0 really improve performance with BTV?

[CoJaBo]

BTV doesn't work well with RAID I've heard. Get a very fast
large non-RAID drive for best performance.

[gjunky]

I have a single 160Gb (see signature) drive that records all my shows and holds the OS. I can record two shows and watch a recorded one, all from the same drive without any problem. Keep in mind that with RAID-0, althouh the total throughput will be a little higher, you also doubled your MTBF (doubled the chance you loose your data).

-gjunky

[dancetracks]

It would be best to separate your data drive from your boot drive. That said, for best performance you would want three drives, one for the OS, and a RAID 0 of two drives for the BTV data files. Stripe of 64k is fine as your video files are large. Also, to help with performance, create a separate partition for the paging/swap file. RAID 0 will increase your risk of a drive crash by the number of drives you use. Frankly, I only use two disks in RAID 0, with separate partitions for OS, page file, and video data, and I don't care if it crashes as it is only TV. I'll just rebuild it.

And yes, defrag your data drive at night to keep up disk performance.

[flexx]

I am running 4 200 GB SATA drives in a RAID 5 configuration, and the performance is great. To gte the bester performace, make sure you get a good RAID controller card.

Chris

[Fonze]

Do you think running an older hd using Ultra DMA 66 with a newer hard drive that uses Ultra DMA 100 would degrade performance? my 80gb raid setup uses an old 40gb maxtor HD and a newer 40gb IBM deskstar, and by newer i mean in the last 4 years.