Having 2 partitions with different RAID on the same array

wel let see. so your saying that when you RAID 0 stripe two hard drive and you wanted to take the 100 GB partitions and let the other 400 GB partitions to become a raid 1 on the same drive from the raid 0 hard drive? I don't think we could do that if Intel Matrix can then that would be hard to recover your hard drive what would happend if you damge the RAID 0 hard drive there no way to recover the other half of the RIAD 1 on the same RAID 0 hard drive or all the partitions.plus it will slow down the hard drive it would work to hard. to me it does have to be another hard drive though you can raid 0 on two hard drive and take the new hard drive or new two hard drive and raid 1 to mirrior your raid 0 hard drives. you can add more PCI-E SATA cards to mirror more drives or raid 0 more drives. alos if you have a PCI-E video card slot that u don't use it will work in that slot too they got a PCI-E 8x SATA card even x4 even better and they hold more raid controller but they are kinda high $

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E...


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...


I hope this make sense.if I am wrong please correct me.

As far as I know the intel RAID controller is the only controller capable of doing RAID 1 and RAID 0 over patitions with just two drives.

It doesn't hurt performance as much as you'd think. I always stored the programs and the OS on the raid 0, and the media and work files on the raid 1 portion. Since the RAID 1 portion wasn't accessed as much then It made little difference.

Recovery isn't any different then a normal raid situation. Should 1 of the 2 drives go down you would lose everything in the raid 0 portion, However once you inserted the new drive you would simply repartition the drives then the raid 1 can be rebuilt.

Really RAID is designed for redundancy not backup. I would recommend you get 3 drives, 2 for raid 0 and 1 for backup. Nero's back it up actually works pretty well for automatically moving select files and folders for backup purposes.

If your going to get an external controller you may as well go raid 5. But for most home users it's overkill.

it's exact what PsyKhiqZero explained.

Performance are not hurted in any way, thus having a fast RAID0 partition starting the OS and a RAID1 partition just using 2 disks.
also recovery is very easy, as usual.

your idea of 3 drives is somewhat smart, but, you see, I must purchase 3 drives instead of 2.

moreover, applying your solution, I must make the backup on my own, so every week I must remember to backup everything; I can also use akronis for example, but that would mean anyway to take and attach my backup hard drive (that I would put external, cos I think it's useless having a backup HD powering up everytime the PC is on).
I know that this are just minor things, but compared to the SIMPLE solution of having two RAID on two disks, that is really weird.

Raid 5 I think is nonsense for desktop users....

BTW, is RAID1 slower than a single hd solution? or even faster?

and do you think there are out there PCI RAID controller based on the Intel chipset??

Go ahead with 2 HDDs in RAID0+RAID1 configuration as you described. Having third HDD for backup depends on the volume of your data files. You can buy either external HDD (at some later point because of the cost) or a cheap USB flash drive for backup purposes.
Having automatic backups involves permanent connection of your backup device. If you go with ext. HDD or flash drive then you will have to manually run the backup process.
Either way it will be cheaper (zero cost) to write a simple CMD script to maintain the backup process.

Go ahead with 2 HDDs in RAID0+RAID1 configuration as you described. Having third HDD for backup depends on the volume of your data files. You can buy either external HDD (at some later point because of the cost) or a cheap USB flash drive for backup purposes.
Having automatic backups involves permanent connection of your backup device. If you go with ext. HDD or flash drive then you will have to manually run the backup process.
Either way it will be cheaper (zero cost) to write a simple CMD script to maintain the backup process.

Some RAID implementations deliver greater READ performance over simple 1 HDD solution.

Yes, there are Intel RAID add-in boards: ]http://www.intel.com/products/server/raid/index.htm?iid=serv_nav+raid#s1=Entry%20RAID%20Controllers&s2=all&s3=all]

Yes, for sure I would go ahead with Matrix solutions, if just a similar workout is possbile for AMD; been lurking too much on 780G in these months, and really I cannot switch to Intel just for this. I'm looking anyway for good multimedia capabilities, HDMI and stuff that I cannot get with Intel (unless I buy a GeForce 9300 chipset-based motherboard, that anyway will NOT support Matrix, becuase it's not Intel chipset)

So, by now the only solution is finding a RAID controller supporting Matrix.
Thanks for the info on RAID controller by Intel, I will search if they support Matrix.

many thanks!!

The problem with this kind of set up is that the hard drive still only have 1 set of heads.. When your reading or writing from one partition, the drive can not be reading or writing from the other partition, which can severely impact performence.. That being said the Intel Storage Matrix will allow you to set up the arrays in such a way.

Well 3 drives will would be cheaper then buying a raid card or building an intel based system. Nero Backit up (part of nero burning suite) will backup files and folders on a set schedual. so really you can set and forget.

I'm not opposed to intel matrix raid, I use it myself. just throwing options out there because Intel's own external raid solutions don't support matrix raids.

@ blackened: of course the heads are just 1 set.
But I'll not spend my time exchanging files from here to there...

I mean, if I play a game, I stay on the "fast" partition...if I shrink and reaouthor a dvd, I stay anyway on the fast partition..
on the "slow" partition, I'll storage files, photos and so on, files that I'd like to have available any time, but if I need to process them in some way and they're big, I'll transfer them on the fast partition before...

@ PsyKhiqZero: of course an Intel based system is very expensive, and I don't want to change my idea, also because I wanted to change my pc in order to benefit of HDMI support (so AMD 780G and similar) not to benefit from fast RAID solutions; but since I discovered this Matrix by Intel, and I found it exceptionnal, I wanted to know at best what could I do..
Intel replied to me, and they told me that Intel RAID card don't support Intel Matrix, but they have their own program; btw I must discover if these RAID card support that kind of RAID.

Anyway, I really appreciate your options, and I think having 3 disks will be the one.
something like buying 2 new HD and make a RAID0 out of them and adding my current HD as storage of "common" files (along the big external hard disk storing the less used files)

many thanks again to everybody!

Matrix is software RAID and runs off the southbridge on your MOBO. Has nothing to do with a Hardware solution like a RAID card.

If you get a RAID card you won't use Matrix anway, you'd use the drivers for the card and it should run the HD's independent of the operating system for the most part.

I've spent the better part of today playing with this, and I have what I think is the perfect solution to all of this.
What works/what to do:
I have a gigabyte ep45-ud3p mobo. In the bios, enable raid. When it's booting, enter the raid utility. FIRST create your mirrored partitions. THEN create your striped partitions. Install windows on your striped partitions. Your striped partition (i know i am using that word technically wrong, but you get the idea) will be your boot disk, your c:/ etc. Your mirrored disk will show up as d:/. You can take one drive out, hook it up to another computer (even if it doesn't have raid), and the mirrored section will be recognized with no special effort. All the mirrored files are intact and accessible. The striped portion is, of course, gone.

What doesn't work/what not do: create the striped partition first. windows will not recognize the mirrored part on another machine, at least not with zero effort (i didn't find a way, but imagine there is one somehow). you can not (at least with my mobo) create more than two raid partitions. eg, you can't have striped swap partition, striped os/data/programs partition, and mirrored backup partition. it will force you to put all size not used in partition 0 into partition 1.

As far as the "raid 1 is not for backup" critics:
i will be using backup software to backup files from striped to mirrored. this way, if a file is corrupted on striped i have an old copy (or ten or twelve) on mirrored, and if either mirrored fails, i still have the other mirrored.

now wth stripe size i should have used, who knows. i maxed it out (128kb), since i watch tons of movies. all legally obtained, of course.