Hello,

I've got:

1 x WD Raptor WD1500ADFD (150 GB / 10000 RPM / 16 MB / Serial ATA 150 / 4.6 ms)
2 x WD Caviar SE16 WD5000KS (500 GB / 7200 rpm / 16 MB / Serial ATA-300 / 8.9 ms)

I plan on using the Raptor drive as my root C: drive for the OS, software applications and games.

I plan on using the two Caviar drives mainly for my music, movies and other downloaded goodies I've collected over time.

Could someone skilled please give me some advice on whether or not I should put the Caviar drives into RAID?

Also, if I do go with RAID, which RAID should I use?

Last, but not least, how do I setup a hardware RAID for the two caviars? Anyone got some simple tutorial somewhere?

And yes, I ask because I'm tech stupid.


Cheers,
Bassa

If the data you are going to put on them is important and/or difficult to recover, I'd consider RAID-1, but you might instead choose to use one of the drives to backup your other two, possibly compressed.

you can't do anything more than raid 0 or 1 with two drives, so you dont need "hardware" raid.

I just don't seem to clearly understand the point in using RAID 1.

I mean, why would I buy two drives with 500GB space on each, set them up in RAID 1, and only have a total capacity of 500GB, when I may as well just use them normally and get 1TB capacity instead, running at just about the exact same performance?

I know. It's because RAID 1 enables you to actually keep the 500GB data recoverable, should one drive fail. And if this the only valid argument for using RAID 1, I believe it will defeat the purpose of my personal requirements.

The data I'm going to store on the two Caviar drives are non-critical. My most important data will be stored on DVD's and the C: drive instead.

So, I guess I should consider using RAID 0.

How do I setup RAID 0?


Cheers,
Bassa

Ok. So I'll just use a floppy disk when booting?

Anyone remember where to get such a floppy disk with RAID drivers? Do they come with the motherboard, or what?


Cheers,
Bassa

dood, do yourself a favor.

just put your drives in the box, boot up windows, format them, and use them.
you dont need raid, it wont give you any benefits, and will just cause hassle.

raid really only needs to be used in certain situations, and i'm just thinking of you.

Valis

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.


Cheers,
Bassa

Data redundancy. If one Drive fails, your data is still fine. It's basically just a perfect copy of one drive on the other one. Of course, the fact that you lose 50% of your drive space would be the price you pay for that data redundancy.

It's good practice if you have really crucial data that you can't afford to lose to a hard drive failure. I see it in some of the smaller application servers in our data center. We can't afford to have them go down, so we'll drop in two 36 GB SCSI drives in RAID1. That way when one fails (As it inevitably will - we have some SCSI drives that have been in service for almost 10 years now), you just pull it out, put a new one in, and you're good to go again without any downtime.

Of course, as you get bigger storage, it seems kind of stupid to waste 50% of our drive space (get expensive), so that's where RAID5 comes in. Which basically lets you use one drive for redundancy, like RAID1, except that it's one drive, no matter how big the array. So, for example, we have huge drive arrays with 8 or 12 200+ GB drives in them, which are redundant just like a two disk RAID1 array. A drive fails, there's no interruption to service, we just replace it with a new one before a second one fails (which would cause too much data to be lost to recover the array). Very useful when you're only giving up like 10% of your drive capacity to get that redundancy.

Only useful if you need to speed up your disk access and disk write times, because you're writing data to both disks at the same time - and this is generally only noticeable if you're routinely loading or saving large files (>250MB). The downside is that if one drive fails, all your data is hosed, since half of everything is on the drive that just died.

Probably not worth the hassle, like the other guy said.

Good post, mate. I appreciat it.

Your words only enhance my previous doubts though, as to whether or not I'd have great use of going RAID or not.

Of course it would help, but only so far and so much.


Cheers,
Bassa