Computer Engineer Hardware Vs Software Raid' title='Computer Engineer Hardware Vs Software Raid' />Single Rail vs.Multi Rail Explainedirst off, Id like to give credit to Jonny Gerow former star of Jonny.GURU. com, now PSU project manager at BFG for writing what I consider the definitive article on power supply rails, one which educated me.If you want an accurate historical and mildly technical explanation of power supply rails, read his article here http www.Also, Im going to not bother mentioning the 5.V and 3. 3. V rails, because it just confuses the matter.In this article I will talk only about the 1.V rail, and singlemultiple versions of it.Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows.LBCA6bpHi4/UFikLzptxkI/AAAAAAAAU0k/x887NRU0zI4/s1600/JasonOne.jpg' alt='Computer Engineer Hardware Vs Software Raid' title='Computer Engineer Hardware Vs Software Raid' />So lets get down to it.Single rail power supplies are bestNo, multi rail units, stupid.Youve got like five times as many rails to power your parts.No, single rail is best, are you an idiot Look at how much more I can overclockYoure just a moron, you dont know what a rail isYoure just jealous because Ive got a single, massive, powerful rail, if you know what I mean.Children, children, calm down and shut your traps.Youre both wrong It doesnt matter, at least not in the way 9.What is a rail No, now stop being a smartass.Seriously, most people have very strong opinions on what rail distribution is best, without understanding what a rail is.The common misconception is that a rail is a part in the power supply that provides power.This is utterly and completely false.You can have two power supplies that are 9.No, rather a rail is a group of traces on the PSUs mainboard that are monitored by an OCP circuit.WhatI said, its a group of traces on the Shut up until you can speak English.Fine. A trace is a pathway of copper on a circuit board that carries electricity.You can see them as the faint copper y lines running all over your motherboard.In this instance, Im referring to the traces on the power supply that the wires in the cables are soldered to, specifically the ones carrying 1.V power. With me so farYes.Speaking of tracing, Im going to go get some stencils.Whatever. Now, OCP is Over Current Protection.What OCP does is it monitors an output on a power supply.If the amount of current What is Read this http en.Electriccurrent. If the current going through a given output exceeds a certain amount, it will shut the power supply down.What does this have to do with single or multiple railsI was about to ask, yes.Glad to know. The difference between single or multiple rails is this Multiple rail each trace is monitored separately, so if, say, one trace goes over 2.A the power supply will shut down.Single rail all traces are monitored all together, so if the total current going through the 1.V outputs goes over, say, 6.A, the power supply will shut down.Alternatively, no OCP may be present at all on the 1.V rail. Make senseNothing about single rail having extra power or being more stable, on either side.You could have two identical power supplies with the only difference being how the OCP chip is configured, and one could be single rail and the other multiple.UnderstandNo, I Yes you do, if you dont go back and read through again.So which is better Well, neither has any affect on voltage stability or ripple suppression or efficiency or anything, really, at least not to a measurable degree.So all those arguments are bogus.A single rail PSU will not let you overclock any higher than a multi rail, or vice versa.However, there is a difference.Lets imagine you have a short circuit on the 1.V and the SCP Short Circuit Protection doesnt catch it.If you have a single rail power supply the draw on that one 1.V wire and that one 1.V trace will climb until either the combined OCP point is reached, or until something burns the cable, your power supply, your motherboard.With large units, usually something will burn before the OCP point is reached.In a multi rail unit, the current would climb until it hit that rails OCP point, at which point the PSU would shut down to protect itself and your computer.Ideally youd have a rail for every wire, but that would be impractical, so you generally see 2 8, depending on the power rating of the PSU and the design philosophy.So multi rail is inherently safer, correct Yes, but early on there were some problems.You see, when multi rail units were first introduced, the specification at the time was poorly written, and power supply engineers made a mistake they put all the cables that power heavy draw components like your CPU, mobo, and graphics cards on one rail, and all the light draw stuff like HDDs and fans on the other.This meant that you had one rail that might be pulling, say, 2.A, and another pulling 5.A. I see They were unbalanced, so the man inside the PSU fell off his unicycle and No.If your PSUs OCP trip point for that main rail was set to 2.A, then your system could easily hit that trip point when under load, causing the PSU to shut down to protect itself.That could cause you to lose data, or leave your friends without backup while playing TF2.Wow that sucks. Yes indeed.The power supply was just as powerful as the single rail units of the time, but would shut down under heavy loads because of the poor cable distribution among the OCP rails.However, that is no longer an issue.The problem units only existed around 2.On a modern multi rail power supply there is virtually no chance of tripping a rails OCP in normal use unless youre running way too much for the power supply to handle anyway.So final verdict Single rail or multi rail Well, with low wattage units it doesnt matter.OCP on a single rail is useful up to about 4.A or thereabouts, which is where most 5.W power supplies fall.So with 5. 50. W and under power supplies, its a moot point.However, with high wattage units, 4.A on the 1. 2V 6.W and higher picking a multi rail unit will provide you with an extra layer of protection.It isnt essential, and it has no impact on the power supplys performance.However, it does provide an extra layer of safety in case you get a short circuit.And I would consider it a must for 1.W power supplies H recently tested the single rail Corsair AX1.PSUs OCP is set for over 1.A, the short overloaded and destroyed most of their testing equipment.So there is a danger with single rail units over 1.W. So multi rail is mildly better, especially with high wattage units, but it wont have any impact on your performance or overclockability.There, does that settle it.HAHA TOLD YOU MULTI RAIL WAS BETTER.You can kiss my rail for all I careighhis has been your friendly neighborhood Phaedrus, signing out.Further Reading. Edited by Phaedrus.Why RAID is not a backup.Today I would like to discuss the topic of RAID more specifically backup issues.In the blog post title I proposed a daring thesis which I would like to develop and, as far as Im able, to prove or defend it.At the very beginning, a few definitions and terms related to RAID have to be introduced, so the readers who arent familiar with RAID wont feel confused.What is RAID RAID technology extends the capabilities of drives and unifies individual disks in a group or groups.Such groups are called arrays.Thanks to the combination of disks into arrays, extra disk capabilities become available.For example, fault tolerant disk or disks arrays, an increased readwrite array transfer or both in comparison to the transfer on a single disk, or the possibility of expanding arrays to additional drives.But lets take it easy, not all at once.There are different types of arrays and their features depend on what types of arrays were used.In this article I would like to focus on just one of the properties of RAID, mainly redundancy or the arrays resistance to hard disk failures.Now let the fun with backup begin.Proof No. 1 All copies are not created equal Imagine dear reader, that you are an administrator of a data server where drives work in RAID 1.To make matters clear, this is a type of array known as mirror type RAID, as it saves the same dataon all disks found in the array.Saving SOMETHING on your array means that you will find SOMETHING on each of the RAID array disks.Suppose that one beautiful day you find a corrupted file on your data server and, to add a dash of drama, assume that this file is a document that belongs to your boss. Lock My Pc V4 7 Serial Kk Hospital on this page. According to how RAID 1 works, the corrupted file was instantly saved on all disk arrays and there is no possibility to retrieve it.All in all, despite the fact that the copies of data are located on all disks, in case of a file corruption all copies on all disks are damaged.That is the first difference between a copy on a RAID array and backup copy.When it comes to backup, the moment a file becomes corrupt its copy will still be safe on a backup server.Thus, all copies are not created equal.Proof No. 2 Attention, virus Lets go back in time about two paragraphs, to the moment when your boss file hasnt been damaged same file server and array.Now, your boss downloaded something from torrents.It was supposed to be a free program for VAT taxes, but it turned out that it was a virus that deleted all the data.Just like in the first example see proof No.A backup system should protect the data against deletion, giving a chance for data recovery at the same time.Proof No. 3 File system bites the dust.File systems also tend to fail.In such case, if a file system in a RAID array is damaged, the damage will be replicated x times, where x is the number of disks in the array.But theres also the other side of the coin.If you manage to fix the file system, it will also be repaired on all of the disk array components.However, if some data will be lost during a file system repair and the data protection with a backup system was not done, then you can write those data off.Proof No. 4 Fire I would like to devote my last proof to the topic which is substantially unpleasant a complete damage of the data server.Fire in the server room or any other factor that could destroy the whole server means data loss.Yes, yes, I understand that in the same burning server room there can be but doesnt have to a backup server.However, there are some techniques that deal with the problem, even when theres fire a fireproof cabinet for storing magnetic tapes with data or data storage outside the company called Offsite Backup or even outside the building with the data server.Now it will only get better.I have outlined four arguments that show why RAID is not the same as backup.I have focused on the weak points of RAID as a system of protection when it comes to data loss.Luckily, there are also many positive aspects of using RAID.Unfortunately, apart from those that were mentioned in the introduction, Im not going to discuss them as this is a very broad topic and its not directly connected with the topic of my post.If youre interested, try finding some material on the topic of RAID on the Internet.The data protection feature of certain types of RAID can protect the data on disks in case of a disk or disks failure, depending on which RAID type is used and the number of disks in the array.And in my view, thats a strong point of some types of RAID fault tolerance.RAID together with backup.RAID technology is often used on servers recording data backups.It is an environment usually supervised by a backup server application that uses RAID arrays as a storage unit.Personally, I consider this as a good practice, provided that a suitable RAID was chosen.RAID Calculator. We know that your data is priceless calculate how many disks you need to get it safe VN F 1.Rating 4. 85 1. Why RAID is not a backup, 4.
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