Considering a NEW raid setup

[spur123]

My Config
EX58A UD7
I7 930
Gskill Ripjaws 6GB kit 1600Mhz
5770's Crossfire

Looking at buying two Spinpoint 1TB's to do in RAID and wondering how beneficial a RAID array is?
Also to set it up is it as simple as setting up the ICH SATA to raid xhd in bios then setting up the array in raid bios, just not sure what raid level to use for each one

 

[DustinM]

Well, if your just getting 2 that limits the levels to 0 or 1.

0 being spanning, using all the disk space between the 2 disks.
1 being mirroring, in shows you 1 disk, but writes to both to offer redundancy if 1 fails.

If you got 1 more disk you could do 5 which gives you spanning with parity, basically not all space combined is usable, but the unusable space is used for parity, so that in the case that 1 disk fails, and you can insert a new disk it can regenerate the data on the new disk.

 

[gtvr]

"wondering how beneficial a RAID array is? "

The best way I've come up with to explain RAID 1 is, it is a potential uptime enhancer. That is, if one drive in the array dies, you don't have to lose uptime while you restore from a backup. If that's worth the cost of an extra HD for you, then go for it. It does NOT replace backup in any way shape or form.

RAID 0 can increase the speed of drive operations, at the cost of increased risk of data loss (if EITHER drive goes, you lose your data). Plenty of threads in this forum - "One drive in my raid 0 died - help!!!"