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Intel and Laptop RAID?
Might E. Mouse writes "The next version of Centrino, codenamed Napa, will support RAID. Intel is pushing it as a great way for business users to have added reliability and data backup on their work notebooks. Should boost gaming performance too. Anyone for 2.5GHz Pentium M, GeForce 7800 Go graphics and a 200GB RAID array? "
In a workplace environment, you should not trust your users (or their machines) with their own backups. I like the situation at my workplace:
If we're plugged into the corporate network, we have software running that will periodically backup everything you place in your 'My Documents' folder or some other such folder. Users know that if they want something backed up, they put their data there.
Nothing beats proper backup and/or syncing tools and procedure.
I have a Pentium 4M in a Thinkpad.
I have had 2 HD's (non-raid) for a couple years now. One of which is a 7200 RPM drive.
I don't think this would work as a RAID for power reasons. Unless some new battery technology really takes off... how could this be viable? I couldn't imagine if both drives were used at the same time. My laptop is normally plugged in (that's when I use the 2nd HD). But unplugged... it would be a nightmare.
Until nuclear batteries are perfected... this is vaporware in my mind.
...a 10lb. addition because you have 4 disks attached to the bottom of your laptop, and I hope you can strap the battery to your back because its going to go quick spinning more than one drive.
Sounds great, but what about battery life? That hing would eat a 6 or 8 cell Li-ion battery for breakfast. Why would a businessman want a laptop that is heavy (2 HDs and bigger battery) low battery life and bulky? Sounds good in theory, but doesnt work - like communism. In summary - that is the laptop for communists.
Um... redundancy? A backup is great until your hard drive dies, then you have a useless hunk of metal while you source a new drive, restore from backup, etc.
BTW, I'll humbly mention that I predicted this a year and a half ago, so at least there's prior art should they patent "RAID on a laptop".
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Because people don't backup on the network once a night and you go to a normal person and you ask them to do that they will stare at you with a blank face. Then if you show them how to do it the face will become more blank.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Slow hard drive speeds are one of the chief bottlenecks to performance on laptops. Setting up a RAID 0 configuration would give you some added speed.
I saw in some of the postings that people DID NOT like the idea of laptop raid. Well, I'm wondering WHY NOT? Any customer who is likely to care about RAID probably isn't the most mobile user (hence not caring quite as much about batterly life). But, I'm afraid of doing certain things on my laptop for fear of it crapping out or worse, getting stolen. For me DATA redundancy is a MUST.
Additionally, Intel's new chips are supposedly VERY power efficient. If they can make future laptops with RAID sans the power problems... great.
But the real issue is probably COST. If you don't know what RAID is you aren't going to buy it....and its not going to increase cost THAT MUCH. But for those of us who DO know what raid is and either want increased performance or reliability.... there is a market! I don't really like having limited options when I'm making a choice, so having the OPTION of RAID is exactly what I WANTED. --Matt Wong
To increase the reliability of your data backup, you need to move it to a medium that is more stable than the original copies. It also needs to be remote from the original. If you're working on a laptop, having the data striped on your laptop is of hardly any use. Flood, fire, electrical surge, theft, accidental damage will all happily destroy both copies of your data, since they're in the same place.
Now where would I like to see a laptop raid? In a mobile media workstation! Video editors, sound guys, they'd love the extra throughput of a raid 0 that fits in their briefcase.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Some folks will do it for speed. RAID0. Laptop drives are usually pretty slow, and usually what makes a laptop significantly slower than an desktop with an equivalent CPU speed (I buy 7200 RPM ones for my laptops myself, but 5400 is more common). RAID0 can add some needed speed. If your just doing word processing/email, that speed isn't needed, but some folks do serious computations on their laptops, others have their laptop do dual duty as their game rig. Not everyone is going to use their computer like you do.
Others will do it for the extra reliability. Nightly backups might be good enough for you, but as I said, not everyone uses their laptops for the sort of work you do.
Second, won't this be bad for battery life having a second 4200RPM drive in your notebook? Not to mention weight?
Third, any money says it'll use the onboard memory for its RAID controller or maybe even software RAID, meaning it, like onboard video will slow your computer down.
For an argument for it, lets turn to my former partner:
This doesn't seem to make much sense. In an age of GBe and 10GBe ethernet, wi-max, storage of files across corporate networks over the Internet, why is RAID in a laptop useful?
Personally, I'd like to see more money put into developing SOLID STATE hard drives that use less power, produce less heat, and have no moving parts- such as a flash drive, only bigger
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Forgive my ignorance, but why on earth would anyone want RAID on their laptop?
I've got an $1900 bill from Ontrack Data Recovery sitting next to me that would explain the situation nicely. In the business world, not everyone is a tech-savvy geek with a broadband connection or a secure backup technique.
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I think in the next 2 years we will be witnessing the death of desktop PC's and replacement with laptops in most circumstances as costs get closer and designs merge.
I, for one, will not welcome our laptop overlords until laptop manufacturors come up with a single set of standards. I want to be able to customize my laptop the same way I can customize my whitebox PC.
Because people want convenience (read: are lazy) and want to just turn on and off and never worry about until smoke comes out, but a tech (with a big S on his blue Spandex) says, "Nothing to worry about! Thanks to RAID!"
The extra drive will just make your battery last a little less longer, so you can turn your snarling, foaming visage to purchasing and rant about how you need a $*&@#! laptop with a bigger battery.
"phenominal cosmic power, itty-bitty battery"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
RAID doesn't replace a backup. You still need to run backups. All it means is that if one drive fails, you can still keep working as it won't affect the entire machine.
Which would you rather have?
- A single hard drive, fully backed up, such that if it were to fail you would suffer a 100% loss in productivity on your system until you had a chance to replace the drive and rebuild everything. Or...
- Two hard drives configured in a mirror, also fully backed up, such that if one drive failed the other drive takes up the slack and you can finish whatever you were working on. Later, you take the laptop in for service to replace the damaged drive having lost zero productivity in the meantime.
I know which I would choose.Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
At the university I work some of the more overhyped IT courses lend laptops to their students. Of the about 1000 laptops in circulation there are maby 3-4 dead HDs a year, and it's all due to generous amounts of gravity. :D
/greger
It has nothing to do with RAID-on-laptops -- this is a strategic move because Intel's planning to use Centrino-like chips in servers pretty soon, as highlighted here (and in other, better articles): http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/12/technology/intel.r eut/
Intel has a good chance of consolidating the underlying infrastructure across all their product lines, which would be a massive win and really benefit from economies of scale.
Actually, it would be due to generous amounts of sudden decelleration. I'd be very surprised if any of them experienced more gravity than you or I.
Another one bites the dust
I'd rather have a wifi link and have my scsi hosted in a nice safe place. Make it 'mirror' over a wifi.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
You never know with those whacky physics students....
Seems like desktops are becoming smaller, quieter and more efficient while notebooks are becoming larger, noisier and hungrier. Whatever happened to portability?
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
I've got an $1900 bill from Ontrack Data Recovery sitting next to me that would explain the situation nicely. In the business world, not everyone is a tech-savvy geek with a broadband connection or a secure backup technique.
And how would having RAID on your laptop prevented that bill? Let's take a look:
1. If you use RAID-0, you get increased performance but 50% higher chance of failure. Wouldn't have helped, so the rest of this assumes RAID-1
2. Assuming failure was caused by dropped laptop: Minor chance that second drive would have survived when first one didn't.
3. Assuming failure was caused by spilled beverage burning out the drive: Again, minor chance that second drive wouldn't have been affected as well.
4. Assuming failure was caused by overheating of machine: If both drives are the same model their tolerances would similar, so again there's a minor chance the second drive would have survived.
5. Assuming failure was due to drive just going bad: Very good chance second drive would have survived, assuming this was some kind of manufacturing defect/bad component, and not brought about by usage & environmental conditions.
So out of 4 scenarios, only 1 gives you a good chance that having a RAID-1 array would have saved you. And what does RAID-1 cost you?
1. Decreased battery life
2. Increased heat
3. Larger case
4. More weight
5. More expensive
Let's take a look at your other options:
1. USB flash memory - quick, small, pretty reliable. Great for datasets 512 MB; very little power usage.
2. CDRW - Available standard on most commercial laptops. Burns a backup CD in about 10 minutes, start to finish. Good solution for datasets 700 mb. Can carry backup/restore CD if you needed to rebuild on the road. Downside: CDs can be easy to scratch, although slim cases can protect against that in not much more space than the CD itself. Uses power when it's running, but otherwise little (if any) power draw.
3. USB 2.0 Hard Drive: Using a laptop HD and a 2.5" case, you can get good performance in a small, external package. Plug in once a day, do your backup, unplug it & put it back in your bag. A little more expensive than options 1 & 2, a little larger, but can get you much higher capacity (80gb now for 2.5" HDs?), and as a bonus, you get an extra drive you could swap in if your main drive fails. This also uses roughly equivalent power to a RAID array when you're using it, but if you just do backups on it then it's not running constantly.
These are all widely-available technologies available right now, that you don't have to be a "tech-savvy geek" to use - everything supports drag & drop.
I'm not saying RAID doesn't have any place at all in laptops - I just don't see the advantage of it for most business/home-class users; and I don't think data redundancy is as big of a factor as some think it would be.