Help: RAID or no RAID on my new system???

Cane1992

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My new stuff just came in and I"m thinking about RAID or not. A little help as this would be new for me.

Is RAID the way to go on my new system? And if so 0 or 1 and how to set up?

* Sorry for the beginner questions from me as I'm a newbie on RAID hard drive setup.

ABIT IS-7
2.8c
SATA Seagate 120gb
PATA Maxtor 40gb


Thanks in advance to any and all replies...
 

Xeon

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RAID 0 little buddy I got to Raptors in RAID 0. I would never go back ever the system response time increases OS load times to game load times. Best money you spend would be to get the RAID configuration.

Xeon

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grafixmonkey

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Better think twice about the raid 0. You should read the Raid FAQ at the top for information, but here's the short of it:

RAID can increase either the performance or the fault tolerance of your drives. (not both, at least not without lots of $$ flowing.) If you use RAID-1, then if one drive fails you don't lose your information. But if you use RAID-1, you only get half of the drive space you started with. If you use RAID-0, then you add the speeds of your drives together because the system uses both of them at once as if they were one drive. BUT: If you use a RAID-0, if one drive out of the two ever fails, then all information stored on the RAID array is lost. (you can't 'get back half' of the data, it's all gone unless you find software that can scan the dead drive and reconstruct a RAID volume - pretty specialized software, but it exists if you can find and buy it.)

There are other levels of RAID but you probably don't have support for them on your controller.

By the way, having a RAID controller usually also allows you to use a hot-swap hard drive bay. If you have more than one computer, this can be a great way to get large amounts of stuff from one to the other, and they look very cool on the front of a case.
 

Cane1992

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I decided to keep my other Maxtor 80GB PATA drive so that gives me:

Segate 120GB SATA
Maxtor 80GB PATA
Maxtor 40GB PATA

What RAID options would you guys suggest with this setup??? My system will be a 2.8c on a ABIT IS-7 board with 1 GB of PC4000 memory.

Thanks...
 

jammydodger

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You cant use RAID unless you have a PATA to SATA converter, the IS7 only supports RAID through Intels ICH7R. This only allows SATA RAID not PATA RAID. The converters are expensive and when you use RAID with two different drives it can be bad for seeks times + because your drives are different sizes you will loose space on one of them (the array will be twice the size of the smallest drive used in it).

You can either:
1)Buy another 120GB SATA drive
2) Buy a PATA to SATA adaptor (you will get a total of 160Gb space if you use the 120Gb and 80Gb drives)
3) Forget about using RAID because if you are just playing games and surfing the net you ARE NOT going to notice the difference.
4) Sell your drives and use the money to buy a WD 740 raptor (you will notice the difference).

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Xeon

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Poster: jammydodger
Subject: Re: Help: RAID or no RAID on my new system???

You cant use RAID unless you have a PATA to SATA converter, the IS7 only supports RAID through Intels ICH7R. This only allows SATA RAID not PATA RAID. The converters are expensive and when you use RAID with two different drives it can be bad for seeks times + because your drives are different sizes you will loose space on one of them (the array will be twice the size of the smallest drive used in it).

You can either:
1)Buy another 120GB SATA drive
2) Buy a PATA to SATA adaptor (you will get a total of 160Gb space if you use the 120Gb and 80Gb drives)
3) Forget about using RAID because if you are just playing games and surfing the net you ARE NOT going to notice the difference.
4) Sell your drives and use the money to buy a WD 740 raptor (you will notice the difference).
1) Always a good option.
2) Another good option.
3) I don't agree so much, RAID is something you notice with anything that hits the HDD's for data. From boot to software loads, and especially braggin rights. I will have to disagree I do beleive you will notice RAID if your playing games and surfing the net.
4) Ya gotta agree there, I would personally get 2 of them.

Oh one other thing jammy is the ICH5R not ICH7R.

Xeon

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jammydodger

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Sorry my bad, I meant ICH5R.
3) I don't agree so much, RAID is something you notice with anything that hits the HDD's for data. From boot to software loads, and especially braggin rights. I will have to disagree I do beleive you will notice RAID if your playing games and surfing the net.
Certainly it will give you extra bragging rights, it is slightly quicker when loading games but for surfing the net its gonna give about as much performance difference as a set of neon case lights.
Problem is that RAID0 is actually slightly slower than a single HD when loading up multiple small files. This is because a RAID array will have a higher seek time than a single drive.

[Insert witty comment here]