first build hdd raid setup

[tenpastseven]

Hi there,

so i have all my stuff ready to be assembled but just curious about one thing. I have an ide 300gb harddrive with windows xp installed and loads data that i would like to keep. In addition to this drive i want to install two 200gb sata drives in raid. So i will have the raid on the two sata and then the ide as storage etc.

what would you recommend me to do when setting up these three drives? Should i keep windows on the 300gb ide and just have the raid setup for data and games or could you recommend me a better setup with what i have. The computer will be mainly for gaming/media stuff.

also if anyone has tips on how to setup these drives correctly or things i should be carefull of. Can i just plug in all the drives at the start and they will al work? or do i have to go messing in bios. I have a new abit fatality fp-in9 mobo.

Help would be much appreciated=)

 

[djminus1]

What level of RAID are you talking about? What are you trying to accomplish? I am assuming RAID0 for performance?

Most likely, you will need to download your RAID driver onto a floppy. You will need to make sure your BIOS is set to RAID mode (not sure what your settings are). Then when you install Windows, it will ask you to push F6 if you need to install a third-party RAID driver. You need to do this and it will prompt you for the floppy.

Chances are, you aren't going to need RAID anyway. I installed it on my system, but don't actually have any RAID arrays defined.

 

[pip_seeker]

It depends on what you plan to use the system for, in most cases for home / general use they just add problems.

The main reason is that home pc's are rarely used for anything strenuous enough to justify the cost of RAID in any form.

A RAID will add heat. If your cooling system is not adequate this could cause failures elsewhere, if not to the RAID itself.

The more disks you run the better the chance of failure. If a hard drive in the RAID fails [depending on the flavor of RAID you use] you will lose all data. If you can't find an exact duplicate of the drive that failed you have to go out and buy double the number of disks.

Cost vs. Need vs. amount of trouble caused by RAID IMHO it's not worth the hassle, unless you are shuffling huge amounts of data around a home network. [IE: HiDef video server, animation / CAD etc] otherwise the cost of it is just being wasted.

Any amount of speed gains are virtually unnoticed [Raid 0]. You would never know the difference in normal everyday tasks.

If you are looking for a back up solution, buy a firewire / usb back up drive or Ghost software if you wish to do it yourself.