setting up RAID

[sutty86]

hi guys got a dilemma
either pay for a 1tb
or make use of spare hdds i have around the house i have a few 320 WD Hdds knocking about and figured using a raid configuration would put these to use but would i have to sacrifice my windows 7 installation etc
Thanks

[Ultima2876]

I don't trust RAID with new drives, let alone old ones. Be careful, RAID is unreliable and you could lose everything if a single drive fails. Personally I think you'd be better spending £40 on a new drive...

[Funkstar]

What kind of RAID: Proper hardware? Software? Fake RAID?

What RAID level: RAID-0? RAID-1? RAID-5?

All that makes a big difference. Also, what do you want to use it for? Main OS? Data?

[Disturbedguy]

I don't trust RAID with new drives, let alone old ones. Be careful, RAID is unreliable and you could lose everything if a single drive fails. Personally I think you'd be better spending £40 on a new drive...

Whether you lose everything or not depends on what version of RAID you are using though, there is more than one type of RAID, the type of redundancy you get depends on the type of RAID being implemented.

[sutty86]

to be honest i dont have a clue which each RAID does,
i would be going off recommadation
i only just gone and bought a new case,dvdrw and other bits and bats this month so buying a 1tb is out of the question at the minute

i do have my dvd collection full on a 320gb which i would love to keep also my windows 7 ultimate os is on there too

[Flibb]

I woudnt bother with RAID. Just install your drives in the case and use them as individuals. Best bet would be to try and identify the fastest drive and use for your OS. You can always copy it all across when you get a new drive.

[Decode]

Hmm, not to hi-jack the thread or anything but, would running two OCZ Vertex 2 SSD's in RAID 0 be good?
I won't be storing anything of importance on there, just running games, browsing the net etc.
Music, videos, pictures an so on will be on a separate 1TB HD.

[sutty86]

@flibb

whats the best benchmarking tool for hdds also how do i do a duplicate copy of the hardrive and also would the os transfer over?

[GoNz0]

i just lost 3tb of info in a raid 5 array thanks to a drive going tits up during a 4-5 disk expansion.

shame the films were not backed up

[Flibb]

@flibb

whats the best benchmarking tool for hdds also how do i do a duplicate copy of the hardrive and also would the os transfer over?

To be honest I just look for comparisons on various forums and as I tend to go for faster rather than greener drives the most modern drive I have tends to be the fastest.


When it comes to shifting the OS between drives, have done it a lot recently, due to playing with windows tablet PCs that dont have a cdrom. I use
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
have used it with xp and win7. Depends how much stuff you have installd as installing win7 isnt exactly a chore.

What put me off raid was a friend that had a raid setup and the motherboard died. He had lots of hassle sorting it out as thedrive was out of production.

[spoon_]

to be honest i dont have a clue which each RAID does,

Without knocking you too much this statement would be enough for me to stay well away from RAID.

Get another single drive.