Setting up RAID

Hi all, my first proper post.

I have recently built a new rig based on an Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard running Vista home premium. To increase disk capacity and speed, I a thinking about getting a new identical hdd and setting up a raid. My understanding from the confusing manual is that there are two ways to do this using Intel Matrix or JMicron.

My first question (assuming I am correct) is which one is the best?

My second question is having loaded a lot of software, is there an easy way to back up the data, set up the raid and restore the backup, so I don’t have to reinstall everything? I do have a NAS drive attached to my router which may help.

Thanks for any help or advice.

Not sure on the Mobo mate but this link should answer all your RAID question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

don't make a raid, if your just using it for storing data on you dont really need it unless it is VERY valuable data

just set it JBOD (just a bunch of disks) if you have to otherwise do not use the raid, it will no doubt cause you a lot of bother if you havent already set it up

I personally love raid, had a raid 0 striped array for 3.5 years as my boot drive with no problems whatsoever. In fact, I only pulled it from my system 2 weeks ago as it was PATA drives with SATA dongles and I bought a new 250gb Spinpoint to eliminate the bottleneck.

Have used various RAID flavors over the years for redundancy or speed reasons, but have never had major problems other than failed disks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by finlay666

don't make a raid, if your just using it for storing data on you dont really need it unless it is VERY valuable data

just set it JBOD (just a bunch of disks) if you have to otherwise do not use the raid, it will no doubt cause you a lot of bother if you havent already set it up

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erm... he's talking about RAID 0, which is the exact opposite - should only be used for worthless data

if you can go for a raid 5 and a decent hardware controller. you will see the speed difference.

hm, technically software raid is faster on low-workload machines

a 3ghz processor is faster than a 333mhz processor