Raido

[scottrazey]

Hello,
I built a gaming computer with windows 7. I would like to try raid0 can i just buy another identical hard drive and set it up.I am concerned about losing my windows install.

 

[MadAdmiral]

You would lose everything. You need to build a RAID out of nothing. You would have to completely wipe your current HDD, and connect the two together and reinstall Windows.

Keep in mind that with RAID 0 the odds of total data loss doubles (failure rate of the first drive + failure rate of the second drive). If you lose one drive, you lose everything.

To be honest, it's better to just leave them as separate drives. While RAID 0 is faster, it won't be noticeable in game.

 

[coldsleep]

MadAdmiral is correct, you will have to do a complete reinstall.

You might see a very minor performance improvement in gaming, but certainly not worth the effort...especially if you're not prepared to deal with potential data loss by having backups and being willing to reinstall your OS if you lose a drive.

Where RAID 0 shines is for writing large/lots of files, like you might see in video or audio editing, or on a large database. I generally recommend against it for home users that aren't already quite familiar with the risks & benefits of RAID.

 

[Shadow703793]

+1 for above posters.

RAID 0 is meant for the highest read/write rates possible. HOWEVER, if one drive goes down for any reason ALL data on those drives will be history. IF you do RAID 0, limit it to OS/scratch drive only. Have a 3rd HDD to store important data. If you want both data protection AND speed go RAID 01 (will need 4 HDDs) or RAID 5.

 

[lehighace06]

+1 to Shadow for RAID01, I'm just filling in detail to his post - with RAID01 you'd basically have the speed of RAID0 but backed up to reduce the chance of data loss, expensive as it requires buying 3 new hard drives rather than just 1 but if you insist on doing a RAID setup it's a much better option.

Also do consider the 3 HDD option of RAID0 OS drives plus a storage drive. You can get small (read: cheap) hard drives to put just the OS on and set those up as RAID0, and then a separate drive for storage.