Whats the Difference between Data Stripping Hard Drives and Data Mirroring Hard Drive

[wildstallion]

Whats the Difference between Data Stripping Hard Drives and Data Mirroring Hard Drive, which will be faster for Photoshop work, storing images and accessing images? RAW,TIFF and Jpegs

[Bluestrike]

maybe you like to read up on these

http://www.raid.com/04_01_00.html

[lsisaxon]

Originally Posted by wildstallion Whats the Difference between Data Stripping Hard Drives and Data Mirroring Hard Drive, which will be faster for Photoshop work, storing images and accessing images? RAW,TIFF and Jpegs

Data striping (from the word 'stripe') stores the alternate information on each harddisk... which means that your data is split between the 2 harddisk, eg odd word on one disk, even word on another. So it's like the information is interlaced. If one of the harddisk crashes, you lose everything. Striping is used to improve the speed because each harddisk only needs to process half the information.

Mirroring is to write the same data onto both harddisk. This method provides redundancy so if one harddisk crashes, the other is still a backup. Occasionally, the data between the harddisks are also checked for consistency.

Other RAID levels can provide a mixed type of method but at the expense of more harddisks, eg, striping + mirroring, 2 harddisk will provide striping to improve the HD speed while another 2 will provide the mirroring of each striped disk. Of course there are other configurations.

[wildstallion]

thanks!!! so for faster access time for working with images a data stripping disk would be better, then just back everything up on an external?

[wildstallion]

Originally Posted by Bluestrike maybe you like to read up on these http://www.raid.com/04_01_00.html

Thanks, that helps alot!!!!

[lsisaxon]

Originally Posted by wildstallion thanks!!! so for faster access time for working with images a data stripping disk would be better, then just back everything up on an external?

Yes, you will get an improvement. But for image manipulation, I think a normal harddisk will do fine. Most of the manupulation are done in the RAM, so getting more RAM will definitely help.

People use striping mainly for video recording where they cannot afford dropped frames due to harddisk being unable to sustain writing at the required data rate for a long period of time. Burst rates are usually quite fast but once the buffer fills up and the harddisk cannot catch up, this is where the video will just stream pass as dropped frames.

[wildstallion]

Originally Posted by lsisaxon Yes, you will get an improvement. But for image manipulation, I think a normal harddisk will do fine. Most of the manupulation are done in the RAM, so getting more RAM will definitely help. People use striping mainly for video recording where they cannot afford dropped frames due to harddisk being unable to sustain writing at the required data rate for a long period of time. Burst rates are usually quite fast but once the buffer fills up and the harddisk cannot catch up, this is where the video will just stream pass as dropped frames.

Ok, thanks!! shall probably just use a normal HDD then and just save money and upgrade ram to 2gb, thanks again