Advice needed on setting up raid

[chrimbow]

Ive just finished building my first PC and need a bit of help with RAID set up
System is Antec fusion case
ABIT AN-M2-HD board
2x SATA samsung hard drives

Ive sussed I need to create the array, I just need to clarify the "raid mode" and "Stripe block" options.

The mode choices are- Raid 5,Mirrored, Striped mirrored, spanned
Stripe block- "optimized" 4k,8k,16k,32k etc
Any other tips on this would be great
Cheers (again ) in advance

Chris

[alsenior]

your raid mode is dictated by how many drives and what type of protection you are after.raid 5 is out of the picture due to you having only 2 drives. so you can have either raid 0 or raid 1. raid 1 gives you enhanced reliability but only the space of one drive . raid 0 gives you enhanced speed but if you lose one drive you lose the lot.

just use the optimized stripe size im sure they put some research in to that so it may be the best mode.

[EtheAv8r]

Well

First question is why do you want RAID? For increased performance (RAID0) or for resilliance (RAID1)?

Why do you 'need' RAID, what is the objective, and do you really need RAID at all?

[chrimbow]

bios doesnt give me the option of raid 0 or 1, just Raid 5,Mirrored, Striped mirrored, spanned?

[staffsMike]

Striped = 0 (both hard drives act as one. Speeds up writing/reading etc.. but if one drive fails both are rendered useless)

Mirror = 1 (direct back up of whatever is on primary disk)

[chrimbow]

I was advised to use raid in my local PC shop mainly for speed. If I use Striped i appreciate I lose all data if only one drive fails, but all my import data will be backed up regularly to my main PC in another room so it kinda made sense...

Thanks for replying BTW guys , much appreciated

[EtheAv8r]

OK then for performance you will require Striped (RAID 0).... but to be honest you may not notice much real-world improvement. Good luck.

[chrimbow]

All set up and running in striped with "optimized"

Thanks for the help guys