Intel and Laptop RAID? 366
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? "
WTF for? (Score:1, Insightful)
Works for me... but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Work backups (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Why do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing beats proper backup and/or syncing tools and procedure.
Interesting... somewhat (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF for? (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, I'll humbly mention that I predicted this a year and a half ago [slashdot.org], so at least there's prior art should they patent "RAID on a laptop".
RAID isn't all about redundancy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting... somewhat (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds unnecessary .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Work backups (Score:5, Insightful)
Battery life (Score:2, Insightful)
Ass Backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:About Time. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't get it? ; onboard ; memory ; solid state? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Works for me... but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Mac OS X disk utility image but on hardware (Score:1, Insightful)
If the hard drive crashes, at least you can be up and running by just using the docking station. Data not backed up and of vital importance could be recover in the meantime.
Re:WTF for? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
This is not about laptops (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTF for? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:WTF for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF for? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that the loss of data argument is as compelling as the loss of use argument. Imagine traveling to overseas and your hard drive dies. Unless you can find a repair shop that you think you can trust, you could be out of a machine for several days. RAID would help mitigate that problem.
Re:WTF for? (Score:3, Insightful)
And really, iPods come with huge hard drives and most people have no problem lugging those around on top of everything else. As for burning your leg, you would have burnt your leg severely on those room-sized computers they had decades ago. Fortunately, technology matures from the heavy, slow, and inefficient and becomes light, fast, and efficient. So what was once thought of as stupid becomes commonplace and expected.
What? That's unprofitable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Profit for them, sucks to be us... why would they change it?
RAID is dead weight with write caching! (Score:2, Insightful)
As it stands today, 95% (probably more) of disks are completely unsafe to use if you value your data. While you may take comfort in having a journalling, or otherwise atomic file system, beware, it does not work properly with write caching!
Before this problem is addressed, any sort of ATA raid is laughable. Theoretically, this problem should be solved when all drives and controllers support NCQ, but I'm not holding my breath; there is still an option which allows discs to lie about the completion of commands, and if there is _any_ performance benefit, I'm betting the disc manufacturers will enable it by default instead valuing your data consistency.
ummm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTF for? (Score:2, Insightful)
Preserve important data.
Improve 'up time'.
Improve performance.
Ease maintenance.
One poster mentions the use of this technology in blade servers along with low heat processor technology. I think that's a good observation; RAID on 'laptop' technology will allow for better imbedded computers, especially with low cost drives.
As for the argument that there are lots of single-point-of-failure in a laptop, the disk drive is the most unreliable point and it affects the most critical, hard to replace part of a computing system - data.
Re:WTF for? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:WTF for? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes that's right gentlemen and ladies(?). You will not be forced to carry the same laptop as everyone else. I know this is now the case. I predict that there will be several companies offering laptops of different sizes, weights, cpu's, storage space, graphic cards, etc., etc., etc.
Hard to believe but true. The future is looking so bright!
Re:Work backups (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the acceleration they feel by sitting sill on a table for example.
If you're sitting still, you are NOT, I repeat, NOT accelerating. I almost wet my pants reading this. Also, when they fall, they acclerate exatcly at 9.81 m/s^2. They would accelerate more on Jupiter but here on Earth, it's roughly 9.81.
Two harddrives? Two everythings! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a better solution -- although more expensive, surely -- would be to stow an extra laptop in your baggage, configured similarly/ identically. Store your unique data on both the internal drive and a removable drive (usb flash, cdrw). Then, without the loss of battery life (and thus portability) you've saved yourself from all manner of fatal failures. Since you are on the company's dime, why not spring for another $2000 for a spare laptop. If the drive goes bad in one (or the battery, display, keyboard, etc), chuck it in the overhead, pull out the other, and resume work with a fresh charge.
Now you don't have to worry about finding any repair shops, you just have to find the nearest fed-ex. You ship your failed system to your IT people, they send it (or a replacement) back, and now you're prepared for the trip home with the same level of redundancy.
Here's two failover scenarios:
1. One laptop with two hardrives, raid: 2 hours of battery. But atleast harddrive failure won't interrupt the 2 hours you've got.
2. Two laptops with one harddrive each: 4 x 2 hours of battery. Any single failure will leave you with at least 4 hours of work.
In the best case of a drive failure near the end of battery life, you will "enjoy" nearly 8 hours of work compared to at most 2-3 hours (for the huge laptop with two harddrives).
To me, raid in a laptop seems like a waste. Single drive failure is such a small factor compared to set of productivity threats faced by a laptop (in the server room there's about zero chance of droppage, theft, spillage, battery failure, forgotten AC cords, closing the display with a pen on the keyboard, among others). I think you'd be better off with two inexpensive laptops (e.g., two stock iBooks = $2000) than one 'big' laptop with a single redundant drive. Leave raid for scenarios where it's really beneficial, 4 drives or more, striping+mirroring, n-1 crc recovery, etc.
Finally, using raid JUST for redundancy and not for recovery/integrity (like in our pretend laptop, 2-disk raid-1) is retarded; I mean where's the high-availabilty in a laptop without hot-plug?! All that wasted overhead for what? I guess it's only a matter of time for laptops to have at least 3 harddrives, at which point other [useful] raid levels [3 and 5] finally open up.
Anyway, I've rambled long enough. Cheers. (Pardon any typos)