Are my 2 hardrives in raid 0

[donohue100]

Hello,

I have 2 identical hardrives, they are not my primary disk, I booted into windows formatted both of them and choose stripe. They now appear as one drive. Is this raid 0 or do I need to configure this in the bios.

Thanks in advance.

 

[WyomingKnott]

It's a Windows-based version of RAID 0, instead of a hardware implementation of RAID 0. Some will tell you that it's not true RAID 0, some will not care.

If you configure it in BIOS, you will have to wipe both of those drives first. This is a totally different setup from the OS-level striping.

Please note, in either case, that a failure of either drive will make the data unrecoverable (probably). Do backups.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Yep, sounds like OS-level RAID 0 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff382722.aspx).

There used to be a CPU resource utilization penalty for OS RAID vs hardware/mobo RAID but I don't know if this is still true. Thinking with a recent CPU it's probably not an issue.

 

[Dereck47]

Is this raid 0 or do I need to configure this in the bios.

Yes, that is RAID-0.
What you did is called Software RAID. If you configured your RAID in your motherboard's BIOS then that is called Firmware RAID.
If you bought a PCIe RAID controller card and configured your RAID that way then that is called Hardware RAID.

 

[donohue100]

Thanks for the replys, I have more questions Would it be better to do a Raid 0 setup in the bios. On my previous rig the Bios screen would say about the raid being ok and so on. I do not see this in my new rig. I tried to setup raid 0 in the bios successfully, the bios screen appeared telling me the raid 0 was ok, but then windows would not load. I then turned raid off in the bios and had to use windows to stripe the hardrives again. What could the issue be with the bios raid setup as it appeared to work but then hangs at windows and reboots.

I would like to say thanks to the admins and users of Toms hardware as without their help I would have taken a hammer to my new rig.

 

[WyomingKnott]

It's better not to do RAID 0 at all. Too much additional risk for too little gain.

I would stick with the striping - Windoze could recover it if your mobo failed, but the hardware RAID would be a problem to rebuild, although it can usually be done.

This is a personal opinion and not confirmed fact.

 

[donohue100]

Am I correct in thinking that raid 0 doubles data rates. I imagine it splits the packets in two storing half and half on each drive. I see your point about raid 0 being a problem if one drive fails but this drive is used to run programs and games so it would not be a problem if it died. I had no problem with previous raid 0 setups.

 

[WyomingKnott]

In the wildest theoretical case it would double data rates. Not even for straight serial reads. It doesn't come close, but you will have to get benchmarks from someone other than me.

 

[donohue100]

Thanks for your advice WyomingKnott much appreciated.

 

[donohue100]

Hi one more thing, could you take a look at this:

The first drive is a OCZ-AGILITY 3 SSD the second drive d: is two sata 3 HD in raid 0. Do these speeds some reasonable for this type of setup.

Thanks

 

[WyomingKnott]

Whoa! That link was blocked by my work network for reasons of "adult and pornagraphy." Wonder who else uses postimage.org?

 

[donohue100]

 

[donohue100]

 

[donohue100]

that any better?