Orochimaru wrote:I currently use a HAD controller that implements RAID 0+1 and I prefer having less disk space, than using RAID 5.
RAID-5 write performance, depending on the card (or lackthereof) varies. Read performance, on the other hand, is like RAID-0 (minus 1 disk).
Orochimaru wrote:No fake RAID here, plain good old school RAID.
I'm curious what make/model of card?
Orochimaru wrote:Agree with you on the SSD part. My SSD is used for Windows and Steam. If I loose it, it's ok. I have backups of my save games. No worries there.
I find re-installing Windows a PITA. So I like to 'dd' the NAND device's C: drive, with C:\Windows, over to the RAID-1 platterset (or RAID-5 for 3-5 disks, RAID-10 for 4-disks) for quick restores from disk. That's why I keep C: on NAND as small as possible., so I can 'dd' it.
I'll have a small C:\SteamSSD directory as well, like for poorly loading games -- e.g., Fallout 4.
I learned long ago how grossly inefficient Windows Update is (200x over writes), so it's NAND, even though it wears it out faster. That's why I like to use a 480-512GB NAND if at all possible, even if C: is only 192-256GiB.
Orochimaru wrote:Everything else goes on D:
D:, including D:\Program Files\Steam, is on the RAID platterset, so it survives. Saves me re-downloading a lot of binaries too.
Orochimaru wrote:On the Linux side, I use the RAID setup.
I put /boot and /root (1st LVM volume) on the NAND for performance.
On large NAND devices, I also have an /exports/static (bind mounted to /home/static) for static files on the NAND as well (LVM system volume).
SIDE NOTE: For GUID Partition Table (GPT) and native uEFI Storage Boot, this means the first 383MiB (1-384MiB) is EFI System Partition (ESP - Linux mount /boot/efi) and 128MiB (384-512MiB) after that is Microsoft Reserve Partition (for storing hidden sectors). Linux /boot, usually 512MiB (512-1,024MiB), is immediately after that, which rounds out the first 1GiB, followed by C: (usually 191-255GiB, but can be as small as 127GiB), then first LVM (for /root, /export/static, etc...) the rest (rounded the nearest GiB left). Also important to use tools to make a copy of the GPT, as well as backup the ESP (and might as well dd MS Reserved), as the GPT has unique IDs expected by boot.
I then put swap, /tmp, /var, /exports/local (bind mounted to /home/local) and other things (2nd LVM volume) that are more variable on the RAID platterset.
I dump level 0 /boot and /root to the RAID platterset (usually /home/local/dumps) for fast restores as well.
Orochimaru wrote:I agree that my Windows setup has many ways to fail, but it's not my main OS and if it fails, it's ok. Nothing major.
It's just so easy to boot a Linux USB system up. Virtually every distro has a duplicate USB boot from is stock install. Restoring a dd image file of the Windows C:, as well as a Linux dump, back to a new, replacement NAND device.
I'm partial to Fedora LXDE and Lubuntu for Fedora-based and Debian-based, respectively,
But my gaming PC is not my primary computing device. I have a Dell Precision M4700 Workstation Notebook (i7-3840QM, 32GiB RAM, nVidia Quadro 2000M 2GiB, 1xTiB NAND + 2x2TiB+8GB SSHD platter+NAND hybrid drives).