one of my 9 year old sata some thing or others is failling,its part of a raid 0, backing up data as I type, will I notice much difference in generall performance if I use say a 1gb samsung f3 drive as a replacement ?
computer used for photo editing,playing old games,some film encoding

Is it really part of a RAID0 stack, or do you mean RAID1? Or is it a single disk on a fakeRAID controller?

Chances are, a modern disk will be faster due to more cache and such. There will be advanced features on it too, but you won’t get the benefit of this unless your controller supports it.

With a bit more information on your existing configuration than “something or other,” I might be able to give a more definite answer.

Cougar…..thanks for reply
its 2x120g sata drives in a raid 2+0 array from an old promise ide card.
In the last two days I have had bad sector reports running xp feel nervous about reconfiguring the array …bit of a computer numpty so hope this info helps

Do you really mean SATA here? I didn’t think SATA really existed back then… and also, you state it’s running on an old Promise IDE card.

Just check that you don’t mean PATA before ordering any disks!

If it’s RAID0 then get your data backed up quick smart!

My god, I don’t understand one single element of what you are talking about!

nearly sure they are sata, might be out by a year or two on age was thinking of removing the raid card and pluging the new drive into the mb (dell 8300)

My god, I don’t understand one single element of what you are talking about!

Good job no-one mentioned JBOD

“old promise IDE card” – that will be an IDE RAID controller card.

I had one, I think it was called RocketRAID or something.

IDE = PATA btw

Not just use one of these NAS boxes instead? Just hook it up to your broadband router.

Given that you’re currently running RAID 0 which means you lose all your data if either drive fails, I’d say you’ll notice the most difference in performance (without a change in recoverability) by running any new hard drive as a solo disk rather than linking it to your surviving old disk.

I’d recommend buying two new disks and then running them as a mirrored pair, RAID 1. More storage, greater speed and vastly more security!

in a raid 2+0 array

I don’t believe you. RAID2 was obsolete when I was still in short pants, and I’ve never seen it actually implemented anywhere. Do you mean 1+0 perhaps?

If it’s a Promise RAID adapter of that vintage, I’d guess at something like a 378 which is indeed SATA. Easy to tell apart by physical inspection, how wide are the cables? IDE connectors are 2″ across.

Assuming it is RAID 1+0 then it’s mirrored so you shouldn’t lose any data when you replace the suspect disk. However, replacing it with anything other than an identical disk might not work; desktop RAID adapters like this aren’t really “true” RAID controllers and have their limitations.

RAID-0 with 2 drives won’t provide much (if any) of a performance game on a desktop so I wouldn’t worry about replacing it with a single more modern drive.

its sata, windows was saying 2+0 this may mean 2 discs in raid 0.Its not mirrored its 2 discs whith the data split.My slight knolledge may have confused people sorry for that.Just wanted to know if a modern single disc would be close in performance to my dieing old ones.The samsung f3′ seem to get good reviews.Unsure about going back to what I have (raid 0)raid1+0 with 2x500g f3 may be the best thanks for youre time ………
cycling hurts my head way less 😉

If you’ve got two disks in a RAID 0 configuration then a single disk failure will result in total catastrophic data loss across both drives (and statistically you’ve got two points of failure so this is twice as likely to happen). RAID 0 in isolation is an inherently bad idea.

If performance is your only concern, taking out both of those drives and fitting a single new one should be considerably faster, and less complex.

If you want to mirror the disks for redundancy then I’d suggest getting two disks in a RAID 1+0 configuration. However, given the overhead generated by running a fakeRAID controller I’d suggest that a single drive and good backups is your best option.

What I’d do is fit a new drive and build it up as my primary disk, take the failing disk out and throw it away, and use the remaining disk as an online backup device (ie, copy my data across to it and maybe use it to hold an Acronis image or similar).