Raid Questions

[Fuzzed_out]

I've searched around a bit but I cant find answers to these questions.

Can you set up a Raid 0 Array and then mirror it onto a Raid 1 array (eg 2x320gb in Raid 0 which are in turn in raid 1 with a 640gb drive)?

How does a RAID 5 array perform in comparrison to a Raid 0 array, mainly in terms of gaming performance.

How easy is it set up these raid arrays?

[arthurleung]

RAID0 then RAID1 is possible. The easiest way of doing it is to do RAID0 on your motherboard and RAID1 in Windows.

RAID5 array, depending on if you're doing it on the chipset RAID or a separate RAID card. Performance will be on par with RAID0 on read, and almost half slower (for your setup with 3 drives).

Also note that chipset RAID does not mix well with overclocking. You are highly likely to get RAID corruption if your system is unstable and BSOD which even RAID5 may not protect your data.

Setting up RAID5 is not hard, get into the RAID configuration interface and build the array, then wait 4-24 hours to initialize the array to get full performance.

[peterb]

But consider why you are doing it and the implications. RAID) gives a theoretical increase in read performance, but the real world increase is like;ly to be minimal, and write performance can be worse. You are also at greater risk of data loss as failure of one drive will result in loss of all data.

RAID 1 gives resiliance, and linked with hot swapping gives greater uptimes if that is important to you. However it is not an alternative to backup. RAID 5 will give a performance increase, but at the cost of greater power consumption (more disks).