Beginner's RAID

What is RAID? Why do I want/need it?
Yes, I do have some unconnected HDs in my system.

Every working computer must be improved .... or replaced ...

If you know anything about electrical circuits RAID can be related to parallel and series circuits a security array is like a parallel circuit and a performance array is like a series circuit, if you don't know anything at all about electrical circuits, this means absolutely nothing to you. RAID stands for Redundent Array of Independent Disks, for RAID to be truly optimized you should run Identical hardrives, same speed, same size capacity, same ATA and DMA ratings. RAID can be run in security mode, which means for example you have two 20GB ATA100 UltraDMA 7200 RPM hardrives running in security mode, the two drives are recognized by the computer as one 20GB hardrive, with one drive being a mirror image of the other, and an exact duplicate, the advantage being that if one hardrive fails you don't loose your whole system, and you can still boot up from the good hardrive, and you have the ability to replace the bad drive and reconstruct your system automatically through the rebuild array function, another advantage to the security array I really like, and the main reason I'm running a security array myself is, when you write to the hardrives they only write at their individual set speeds but when you Read from the drives its doubled, which really shows up in performance when you're playing a PC intense video game with a screen full of enemys where you may notice some slowing down of the game and increased chatter coming from your hardrive since I've been running a security array the game slowing is gone. A performance array gives you faster performance by combining the two drives which your computer would recognize a combined size of 40GB and would stripe{or share} the information between the two drives one drive having half the data, and the other drive has the other half of the data, Performance array writes at twice the speed and reads at twice the speed, but if it goes down you loose everything. It is possible to run dual arrays which would be the way to go if you wanted to invest that much money in hardrives, running a security and performance array together, if the performance array went down you'd still have an operational system. Well I hope this has given you some kind of understanding about RAID, without getting really deep into the subject but trying to explain it in everyday talk. Have a nice day.

If you look closely, RAID is everywhere. You can see the same idea happening in DDR. Or in multiprocessing. Also the voodoo2 had two cards working in SLI, which was kind of like RAID. Now there is a new wireless networking technology developed by Intel that uses multiple bands to transmit, kind of like RAID for wireless LAN.

It's also no secret, that all of the supercomputers in the world are only fast because they have like 50 gazillion processors all working together at once.

This little cathode light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!

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A performance array gives you faster performance by combining the two drives which your computer would recognize a combined size of 40GB and would stripe{or share} the information between the two drives one drive having half the data, and the other drive has the other half of the data, Performance array writes at twice the speed and reads at twice the speed

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HMMMMMMMMM
Can I performance RAID a pair of fast 52X CDROMS that run my game? Having identical CDROMS on each ... Speed up the CDROM reading would certainly decrease those annoying pauses in my PINBALL game as the graphics are changed.

Every working computer must be improved .... or replaced ...

Better yet, you can get a piece of software to run your CD's from HDD in RAID 0 and get no pauses at all.

<b><font color=blue>~ What do you mean "It isn't working!"...Now where's my sonic screwdriver? ~ </font color=blue></b>

Just some RAID recommendations (I also posted this today in the HD section. Check the details there)
1) Dont buy the Seagate Barracude ATA IV for use in RAID 0 (bad performance)
2) If your mobo has embedded promise RAID controller verify that it is NOT the LITE version (limited config possibilities)