Need help about RAID-0

[kreatorone]

Hi.I have question for you guys about raid-0.I have asus m2n-e mobo with raid controller on the board.Currently i have only one hdd ,it's WD 250gb 7200r 16mb cache.2 days ago i attached seagate 7200.10 500gb hd.I created in BIOS new array for them it was striping raid-0 config.In BIOS when i put those 2 hdds on right side in new array window it showed me after finishing only 465gb instead of 703gb.Then i installed fresh copy of win xp sp2, of course i installed raid drivers from floppy disk with clicking F6 button, installation went fine.In win xp in nvidia mediashield it says i have 2 drives first one is wd 238 gb...second one is 465gb seagate both striped (healthy etc...) i guess it's raid-0 config? Ok i started sisoft sandra 2008 and speed was about 110mb/s, is that ok? when i was using only 250gb wd speed was 55mb/sec.Both drives are SATAII/300.The problem is when i open 'my computer' or if go to 'total commander' it shows me only one drive C ,with capacity of 465.77gb, but in mediashield shows 2 drives one of 238, second 465.76gb, what raid-o array did? Win xp doesen't shows my hd of 238gb, how? is it because of difference in hdd capacity? it should be 238+465=703gb...or i am wrong? now i just have 465gb instead of 703gb.I went to computer management and there were nothing to format or to partition.It shows only one hdd letter C on 465.77gb on raid-0 controller, where did i lost 238gb?? .Second question .By your opinion, should i now after all this buy another 250gb wd 7200 se16, and then raid-o again, and to hope that i will see in windows 500gb instead 250gb striped? or should i only buy 750gb wd se16 or seagate barracuda 7200.11 750gb 32cache and put it as first system hdd? and second 250gb wd to put only as backup without any raid-0, 1 10.Is speed on wd 750gb se 16 and barracuda 7200.11 750gb good enough not to think at all to try raid-0...mostly i'm using computer for internet,games, word,web and audio design.Thanks for reading all this

 

[jkflipflop98]

Get the 750 and save all the headaches. Get rid of raid-0. It's not for you.

 

[valis]

....
do do raid properly you should have IDENTICAL drives down to the model number.

drop the raid, doing what you are doing you will not see any benefit, only headaches.

 

[kreatorone]

I guess raid-0 on 2x250gb isn't much space ,i would need then one more hd for backup and then to buy raid controller...i think it's better to buy 750gb and save trouble...i'll think about it little bit more, but do you know is wd 750gb se 16mb better then barracuda 7200.11 750gb? by benchmarks on internet wd is somewhat better , but baraccuda has 32mb cache...so if barracuda is not better then wd with 16 mb cache then what is difference between 16mb and 32mb?

 

[miamirain]

Raid 0 can work with two different sized HDDs but the result size is only 2x the smallest of the two HDDs since striping saves data on two drives simutaneously so it can't go over the size of the smallest drive, with a 250Gig and a 500Gig you will have the result of 2x250=500, basically you are wasting half the space on that 500Gig HDD. Based on what you have right now what I'd do is get another WD 250Gig (EXACTLY same as the one you already have) and set the two 250Gig in Raid 0, then use the 500Gig as a backup drive to backup your data often since Raid 0 offers no ways to recover your data once a drive goes bad. There is a link on the main page of Tom's hardware that talks about mixing different HDDs for Raid, it's got some good info on what you are doing, read it if you have time.

 

[kreatorone]

Thanks guys.I decided to buy 7200.11 seagate 32 mb cache 500gb as a system drive i'll do partition of 100gb and rest for backup also i have one of 250gb wd se16 so i think it'll be enough for now.Sometime in near future i'll do either 2 scsi drives or raid-0.