Two harddrives...Do i need to Raid??

[DragonXI]

im planning on building my own PC, for the first time --- I ordered Two 250GB Seagate SATA Hard Drives...

Reason i got the 2nd hard drive was mainly to put all my Music, Videos, Movies etc into that Drive....and use my 1st hard drive for my OS, Applications, Games.

I keep reading though people who do RAID & Partions etc...

Since i am using two Hard drives should i be doing a RAID or Partion? Is it okay to just use each as a seperate hard drive without losing performance?

any type of reply will be appreciated. thanks

 

[Nedkt]

Skip the raid.

 

[Robovski]

You don't need any kind of RAID configuration. You might want a particular kind of RAID array for a particular reason, but there is nothing wrong with just having 2 seperate drives.

 

[reaper]

im planning on building my own PC, for the first time --- I ordered Two 250GB Seagate SATA Hard Drives...

Reason i got the 2nd hard drive was mainly to put all my Music, Videos, Movies etc into that Drive....and use my 1st hard drive for my OS, Applications, Games.

I keep reading though people who do RAID & Partions etc...

Since i am using two Hard drives should i be doing a RAID or Partion? Is it okay to just use each as a seperate hard drive without losing performance?

any type of reply will be appreciated. thanks

RAID= Gaining performance, there is potential of Hard Drive crashing and lose all data if you do RAID0 but it's not a high percentage.

There is no performance loss in either of them, just that if you dont do RAID, you have normal performance.

Conclusion= If you dont have any important file, do RAID0 because it will be faster in loading time, especially in games. If you do have important files, still do RAID0 if performance is your concern, but should backup those files just in case.

 

[RocketRobin]

If you have a dual core CPU then RAID0 will rock.

If you have a single core CPU the RAID conroller will lag out the CPU, so you won't get any performance boost and you will have to suffer through an extended POST time, as the RAID array is examined... and it's a pain in the ass.

 

[PCcashCow]

If you have a dual core CPU then RAID0 will rock.

If you have a single core CPU the RAID conroller will lag out the CPU, so you won't get any performance boost and you will have to suffer through an extended POST time, as the RAID array is examined... and it's a pain in the ass.

This is only true for most on-board Raid controllers. Dual Core assists Software raid well, but really has minimal bearing on Raid percentages.

 

[evo_karter]

If you're not particularly paranoid with you data, doing a normal setup is fine. if you are, then doing a raid 1 (mirrored drives) setup would be a good idea. With raid 1, you'll get data protection but you'll effectively have only half of your total storage space (250gb) and write performance will be a bit slower. Don't bother with raid 0 unless you value speed vs data reliability.

 

[eofu]

If you have a dual core CPU then RAID0 will rock.

If you have a single core CPU the RAID conroller will lag out the CPU, so you won't get any performance boost and you will have to suffer through an extended POST time, as the RAID array is examined... and it's a pain in the ass.

I never had raid. so I wouldnt know but are you saying that all raid drives have lag issuie at the bootup? If so how long?

 

[atarione]

no raid...


raid 0 on your desktop pc is a total waste of time... and just doubles your odds of losing all your data if a drive crashes.... or if the controller crashes


raid 1 gives no performance increase but does offer redundancy at the price of 1/2 your storage capacity.


if it was me I'd just hook both drives up as seperate disks and be done with it.


raid 0 only really makes sense in video editing type applications where you need optimal speed for large files.