First timer in raid need HELP

[savan1221]

ok so i know nothing about raid and how it works what are the advantages and in my computer do they show up as individual hdd or combined and is it worth it

i have this mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130297

i have x2 intel x25v 40gb ssd
i have 1tb hitachi 7200rpm sata 2
1 1tb wd green sata2
x2 hitachi 2tb 5400rpm SATA3 hdd

so total storage is 6tb and 80gb of ssd

if i just do the ssd raid then will i be able to install two different operation systems or will it only recognize as one drive
and is it worth putting the 6tb in raid and which hdd would i connect in which port remember he mobo only has two sata 3 ports and i have 2 2tb sata 3 hdd and all other hdd are sata2

 

[Lanqu]

Why do you need raid array? Theoretically they must be shown as the one device

 

[4745454b]

RAID is used for either massive throughput (1,000+ users hitting a database) or to provide "fault tolerance" (the ability for the server to stay up even if a drive dies.) This is useful for webservers and you can't afford even one second of downtime. (amazon)

With modern drives being able to hit 100MBps+ I really don't see the need for RAID. Being able to read 200MBps really isn't going to help you much. Unless your system is already top notch and you can't really upgrade anything else other then your drives, I strongly suggest you keep your drives separate.

 

[RetiredChief]

First off a single 40 gig SSD is below my recommended size for Dsktop operating system. My recommended size is 80 gigs. And yes two 40 gigs in raid0 would do that - But what I would do is install operating system on one pus a few programs. Then I would direct lesser used programs to install on the 2nd SSD. While I use to use raid0 on all my systems, prior to SSDs, I now no longer recommend raid0 with a few exceptions. If Raid0 is used you loose Trim support for SSDs

Suggest you read: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=32&post=267511&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

For HDDs
Would NOT recommend raid0 for the two 1 TB drives (the WD green is not recommend for raid0).
You could raid0 the two 2 TB drives, but is it advatages- good question and dependent on use.
Raid0 provides a big improvement on Sequencial read/writes, but does nothing for the 4K random read/writes and for access time. With that in mind, If you are into working with large databases, cad/cam programs, do a lot of editting of photes or dvd files or blu-ray files then RAid0 may be the way to go. DVD dot vobs are typically 1 gig and Blu-ray files can be upto 40 gigs (avg probably 20 gigs) and these files are sequencial. My son has put the majority of his DVDs and Blu-ray disk on a pair of NAS 1.5 TH drives in Raid0 - Bear in mind Raid0 will not improve DVD/Blu-ray playback from a raid0 setup - Only help if editing these type of files.