What kind of RAID?

[ahem]

I have one SATA segate 80 gb as a c drive, oneSATA 640 gb hitachi deskstar 7k1000.b as a storage drive, and one EIDE 250 gb WD for backup purposes. What kind of RAID should i use and how do i implement w/out formatting my HDDS?

I have a mATX mobo w/ only 2 SATA ports available(both full), and one EIDE port available(full). I dont want to buy any new HDDS. I sorta want a balance between strorage and performance, leaning a bit towards storage.

Also, as a side thing, is hitachi a good brand and is 640 gb a good HDD size?

Thnks,
AHEM

 

[r_manic]

First off, why do you want to go RAID? Do you have any particular application where fast read and write speeds are paramount? In any case, building any kind of RAID array requires you clear the data from your hard disks... so back up everything you've got now!

 

[wuzy]

In short, it sounds like you do not need RAID.
Read the RAID FAQ sticky for more info.

 

[Zenthar]

RAID is not some performance silver bullet, the benefit is mostly in reading/writing large files like multimedia files. Moreover, most RAID require identical (or closely identical) drives to work.

 

[ahem]

I apologize for sounding dtupid beforhand, but can i partition me 640 in an 80/560 and use the 80 fro RAID. i use A LOT of multimedia.

Sry.

 

[inspector71]

your not stupid ..... i would take first place for stupidity for all the questions i ask and threads i start.

 

[sminlal]

Can i partition me 640 in an 80/560 and use the 80 fro RAID. i use A LOT of multimedia

It depends entirely on the RAID controller. I believe you can do this sort of thing with the Intel ICH chipsets, but you should expect to have to backup and restore your data.

But why do you want to do this? Is it because your system is slow when you access the files? Is it possible that you don't have enough RAM and are paging heavily? If so, then RAID isn't going to help that much.

You should make sure you understand exactly what the problem is before spending time and effort trying to fix it...