Raid question

[spottydog10_58]

Hi, Setting up a raid 0 with 2 raptor 74gb, on an Asus P6T se. When I go into the raid utility it tells me the volume size can be up to 140gb. How is this possible, I thought raid 0 treated it as one 74gb drive? The drives are connected on sata 1 and 2, any help appreciated, Mike

 

[sminlal]

RAID 0 creates one large disk out of two small disks, and the data is interleaved between them half-and-half. Reliability is lower because you loose all you data if EITHER drive fails.

RAID 1 creates a mirrored volume from a pair of disks with two copies of the data, one on each disk - so the capacity is the same as the smallest disk. Reliability is higher because your data is still accessible if either drive fails.

It's dangerous to be fiddling with RAID if you don't have a pretty good idea of what you're doing. Before you commit important data to those disks you should experiment with what happens if a drive fails and how to recover from it. You don't want to be learning what is and isn't possible when a drive containing your precious data has ALREADY failed...

 

[spottydog10_58]

Thanks for the input, but that wasnt an answer to the question I asked...

 

[sminlal]

Thanks for the input, but that wasnt an answer to the question I asked...

You asked:
I thought raid 0 treated it as one 74gb drive?


...and I replied:
RAID 0 creates one large disk out of two small disks...

RAID 1 creates a mirrored volume from a pair of disks with two copies of the data, one on each disk - so the capacity is the same as the smallest disk...


To be more succinct: No, RAID 0 does not treat two 74GB drives as one 74GB drive. That's what RAID 1 does.

 

[spottydog10_58]

Thanks for that it was helpful.
So if I was to dual boot 2 OS on the same physical drive(s) using 2 partitions,
do I need to create 2 raid volumes or 1 volume with 2 partitions?
Thanks
Mike

 

[sminlal]

RAID and partitioning have essentially no relationship. Once you create a RAID volume (of any kind, RAID 0, RAID 1, etc.), you can partition it any way you want, including two partitions for dual-booted OSes.

Are you trying to use RAID so that you get better performance? Or are you more concerned about protecting yourself against a drive failure? Or Both?

 

[spottydog10_58]

I'm using raid for performance.
I made 1 volume stripe 0, with 2 partitions for dual boot.
Both are Win 7 RC.
One will be for progs and internet, the other as stripped as possible for audio production.
I normally dual boot XP/vista or win7, but my audio sequencer stops support for XP very shortly, hence the 2 win7 boots.
Mike

 

[sminlal]

OK, that sounds good. Don't forget to have a backup strategy. You should be doing backups whether you use RAID or not, but just be aware that the chance of loosing your data is higher with RAID 0 and that makes a good backup strategy that much more important.

 

[spottydog10_58]

Yes your right about the back up.
I save all data to a different drive and back up that data to an external one.
I usually ghost the OS's, I'm presuming it's no different with raid?
Mike

 

[sminlal]

I usually ghost the OS's, I'm presuming it's no different with raid?

Nope, no different.