What happens if the RAID is disabled in multi-hard drive laptop?

Question

I am planning to buy a laptop at XOTICPC.COM. This particular laptop has 2 of 128 GB M.2 NVMe PCIe Solid State Drives and one of 1 TB (7200 rpm SATA III - 6GB/s) drive for a total of three hard drives in one laptop. There is a customization option wherein you can choose RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAID disabled. I know that hard drives with RAID most of the time fails or crashes, losing your data altogether. If I disable the RAID option, what will happen when I am accessing my files besides slower read/write speeds? will I be able to access the hard drives separately in the File Explorer or My Computer? will I be able to open/save my files on three different hard drives?

I'm sorry I am new when it comes to multiple internal hard drives. My last laptop has only one hard drive and was lost when the specs of this laptop has three hard drives by default. I just want to ask everyone who has experienced using a computer with multiple internal hard drives without RAID, as to what is it like? how would you use all your hard drives? will the hard drive under normal circumstance crashes even without RAID? is it better to risk upgrading to RAID 0 or RAID1?

Answer 1

Yeah you can still access the drives no problem. RAID stands for random array of inexpensive disks or something. I don't know where you heard that RAID is more prone to failure. I believe RAID was actually developed to give more security to a system with multiple drives. On the other hand I have heard that the performance increase can be significant. If the computer has a RAID controller and you are able to boot windows from the RAID drives I personally don't understand why you wouldn't.



I just saw your other questions..well it was like having a hard drive. You could save data and such, but I have two little baby sized SSDs(250gb) and am now trying to figure out what can fit where. Unless you have a lot of valuable data losing a hard drive is not the end of the world. I mean you just take the old one out and replace it(when and if it goes.) The other drive in the RAID configuration would still be usable if the other drive failed, although you wouldn't be able to access the data if they were striped. I'm a full time student and I don't use mirroring, and would prefer to use striping instead but I don't have a RAID controller like your so lucky to have.

Answer 2

The XOTICPC is not a custom lappy. They are going to sale you a Clevo.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clevo



These companies take a empty shell of a lappy and all they install is CPU, GPU, RAM and a hard drive. The very same components that come in all lappies. All laptops or desktops have pretty much the same CPU, GPU, ram, hard drive and screen. Most people do not know that the brand of the hard drive can make all the differences in the world. Intel and AMD make the best CPU. AMD and Nividia make the best GPU. What makes a good laptop or desktop is the manufacturing process, the motherboard and the sub components used in them.



No matter what they say you are NOT getting anything that is custom.



To name a few that use the Clevo empty shell are Sager, Xoticpc, Avadirect, Ibuypower, Cyberpowerpc, originpc, Digital Storm, and so many more. What it comes down to is your buying a lappy that is not custom at all. It is a Clevo that a person installed 4 components and they call it a custom lappy. You can get the same thing buying a brand name lappy and save a ton of money. They really jack the prices on some of these. Before buying a what you might think is a beast of a gamer that was customized just for you, compare the price of it to one of the ASUS or other gamers on the market. Also compare the warranties and other services they offer.

Answer 3

RAID doesn't necessarily mean your hard drives are more prone to failure, but there's a bigger chance of data loss in RAID 0 configuration, I'll explain.

RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks". It has different configurations, but since the choices given to you are 0 and 1, I will explain only those two,



RAID0 is simply a spanned volume. If you have 2 hard drives, and you create one partition in each, you have a minimum of two partitions in the computer. Let's assume you're using Windows, in this case you have one hard drive as C: and the second hard drive as D:

Now let's say these two hard drives are 1TB each, so you have a C: drive that's 1TB and a D: drive that's 1TB (approx). Now let's say you want to copy a single file that's 1.5TB in size, where will you save it? You cannot. Even though you have a total of 2TB available (approx), you have only 1TB in C: and 1TB in D:, in order to save the 1.5TB file, you must SPLIT the file into two parts, save one part in C: and the other part in D:

With RAID 0, you can COMBINE the two volumes as one, and have a single 2TB (approx) C: drive, and hence you can very easily save the 1.5TB file. There's one significant drawback of this configuration, failure in one hard drive will corrupt the data in the second hard drive as well, so yes, in some sense, a RAID0 configuration will increase your risk of data loss.



RAID1, on the other hand, uses the hard drives in a different way. In RAID 1, your total capacity is reduced.

Let's take the previous example once again- you have two hard drives, 1TB each. In total, you have 2TB(approx) of available storage space. But in raid one, the available capacity will be 1TB (approx). What RAID1 does is called "Mirroring". You will see only one hard drive of 1TB(approx), and the other hard drive will be used to "mirror" this drive. Whatever you do on your 1TB, will in parallel be done on the invisible 1TB drive. When you save a file, two copis of the file will be saved, one on your 1TB, and the other on the other (invisible) RAID1 drive. If your first drive breaks, you will always have an up to date copy of all your work and data on the second hard drive. It's unlikely that both the drives will break at the exact same time, hence a RAID1 configuration will safeguard against data loss from hard drive failure, at the expense of available storage space. RAID1 will also speed up READ operations, as parts of the file can be read in parallel from both the real drive and the mirror drive.



With no RAID, our example computer will have a classic configuration, C: and D: drive with 1TB(approx) in C: and 1TB(Approx) in D: (if you create one partition for each drive). The two drives will be completely independent of each other, failure of 1st drive will cause you to lose all the data in that drive (unless you have a backup), but will leave data on the second hard drive unaffected.



PS: If I was ordering this laptop, I would keep RAID disabled.

Answer 4

Yes, with RAID disabled you will have your Operating System on one drive in one partition like normal. The other drives will do nothing until you format and use them, You could load Linux or XP or anything on the other ones or just use them for movies and such.

Answer 5

For any sensible use of raid you need identical sized drives. Use them as individual drives.