[Solved] What are my options?

Sorry for the dumb questions, but I am kind of new at dealing with hard drives and RAID arrays. I never really did anything besides install 1 disk on any of my previous builds. That being said, I have been considering creating some kind of RAID array. My goal is to increase performance. Here is what I have:

1 x 1TB Seagate 7200
1 x 500GB Seagate 7200
1 x 500GB WD external USB

I was about to buy a second 1TB drive and do a RAID 0 with those. I could use either remaining drive for backup, correct? If I do that will partitioning off the OS increase my performance as well? Do I have any other options? Also, I have the Asus P7P55D MOBO that comes with Asus Drive Xpert. I have not installed it, but I assume it is simply RAID software. Is that acceptable, or do I need to look into hardware RAID controllers?

Thanks!

I thought about that too, but the price of the performance drives turned me off a bit. So you are suggesting something like 150GB raptor for OS and games/applications, and just use the others for storage? If so, can you give me an idea of what the performance difference would be from a 7200 drive like I am using now?

to increase performanc you would be better to re install as your old drive is probably fragged.

You could image your old drive on to the new one

Yes, completely agree. In fact I'd personally take the approach "can't be done" rather than "iffy".

But in terms of it working properly with the kind of performance you'd expect of RAID 0 (i.e., better transfer rates and concurrent I/Os, no improvement in access times, no noticeable impact on CPU utilization), motherboard RAID 0 will work as well as as a dedicated controller card. I'd add a caveat about not using an excessive number of drives, but there's a limited number of disk connectors on the motherboard anyway so it's kind of a self-limiting solution.