to use RAID or not to use RAID, that is the question, (and how to use it..)

[Byan]

I ordered my parts last week, and got them on friday.., almost done building new comp..

I have a DVD+/-RW, a CD-RW, a 80 Gig, and a 60 gig..
my mother bought a 80 gig which is identical to mine for my sister which is going into the older comp that I've been using
I think I may be able to have my sister use my 60 gig, and get the 80 one.., she'll never use the 60 gigs up..

my mobo (ASUS A8V deluxe) has two IDE controllers, and a third IDE/RAID controller (manual says it can be used for a single drive as well)

I am thinking that for best performance, I should put my optical drives into the first two controllers (one drive each), and then use the two 80 gigs in RAID 0 on the RAID controller
everyone agree?

they are WD drives, and I have complete faith in the fact that they won't fail.., it just would really suck to all data cause one failed.., I'll just have to back-up more often, which shouldn't be a problem with my new DVD burner...


now, I have never used RAID before.., so I really do not know how to set it up.., no idea where to start actually.., can someone help me out?

thanx in advanced,
Byan

[SuperSparks]

The big disadvantage to RAID0 is in data integrity - if you lose one drive you lose everything. And the chances of losing a drive are more than twice that of having a single drive. And I've seen some reports lately that suggest the real-world performance of RAID 0 just isn't that much more than a single drive. I'll see if I can find an article.

RAID 1 (mirrored) on the other hand, gives a huge increase in data security (many hundreds of times that of a standalone drive), for little impact on performance. The downside is that you need 2 drives for a given amount of hard drive space, so to get 80GB with RAID1 you'd need 2 80GB drives. In RAID 0 those same drives would give you the full 160GB.

So the answer is, go for RAID 0 if you want to sqeeze the very last drop of performance out, but you'd better be very religious about your backup routine.

[SuperSparks]

Here's a quite comprehensive report:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2...d/index.x?pg=1

And this is the page that really get's to the heart of the matter, but you can see that the performance gain (or loss) depends very much on the chipset:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2...d/index.x?pg=6

[Byan]

well, if I am going to use RAID.., what do I need to do.

I assume windows will see the two drives as one..

but how do I set it up in the first place...?, like format the two drives..

[DrMDJ]

In the case of your board (A8V) you only have a single channel PATA raid controller (since you seem to be talking about using PATA raid not the sata raid on your board we'll ignore the sata raid). From a performance gain standpoint, going with a raid 0 setup and putting two (PATA) drives on this single channel will radically reduce or negate the potential raid (0) benefits. The channel is still subject to the PATA (ide) limition of only one device (drive) being able to be read or written to at a time (unlike scsi). Bottomline: the use of raid 0 in this case will yield pretty much no payback. IMO you'll be overcomplicating your situation without the benefit.

[SuperSparks]

I agree completely.

But to answer your question about how to set it up, once you have enabled the RAID controller in the BIOS you will get a RAID setup screen on restarting the PC, where you will get the options to build the array. You should find it self-explanatory once you're in there.

[Byan]

yeah, I was thinking about that last night...

what use is RAID if I am going to put both drives on a single channel.., I doubt I would see any extra performance at all.., it sounds like it might make it worse.



I guess I will end up giving each HDD a channel and puting both optical drives on one..