Raid?

[Hicks12]

So can someone give me the low down on the options for this?. I just got another 250gb hard drive and so would like to raid my 2x 250 and leave the 640gb seperate. Does it matter if they are not identical? and what ones offer the best performance?. My mobo supports raid, is that ok?

I know some will say google but id rather have someone tell me how its done and just simplify it.

[aidanjt]

They don't have to be 100% identical. But it is preferred. As a result the 'weakest link' in the chain will be the bottleneck.

RAID0 will provide the best read/write performance, since it stripes all blocks across both disks, but if one drive dies, the array is lost.

RAID1 will offer good read performance, and write performance equivalent of the slowest drive, RAID1 will also consume a full drives worth of space because it mirrors all the blocks you write on both disks.

[jim]

Also bear in mind that if the motherboard dies it can be a real pain to resurrect the files. As always, you have to backup

Also, IIRC the ICH9R lets you mix RAID levels, so you can have 50GB in RAID1, and 200GB in RAID0. I could be wrong on that though, I don't run a RAID array any more.

[Hyperviper34]

Raid 0 (Data Striping) – Optimizes two identical hard disk drives to read and write data in parallel, interleaved stacks. The two HDD perform the same work as a single HDD but at a sustained data transfer rate, double that of a single HDD, so improving data access and storage. The use of two identical HDD is recommended for this setup.

Raid 1 (Data Mirror) – Copies and maintains an identical image of data form one drive to the second. If one fails, the disk array software directs all applications to the surviving drive as it contains a complete copy of data. This Raid configuration provides data protection and increase fault tolerance to the entire system.
Use existing drive and a second drive of the same size or larger.

Raid 10 – Best of both worlds in data striping and mirroring combined without parity (redundancy data) having to be calculated and written. You get all the above benefits; use four HDD or your existing one and three others of the same size or larger.

Raid 5 – Strips both data and parity information across three or more HDD, advantages of Raid 5 include better HDD performance, fault tolerance and higher storage capacity. The Raid 5 configuration is best suited for the transaction processing, database applications, enterprise resource planning and other business systems. Use a minimum of three identical HDD’s for this setup.

[aidanjt]

Also, IIRC the ICH9R lets you mix RAID levels, so you can have 50GB in RAID1, and 200GB in RAID0. I could be wrong on that though, I don't run a RAID array any more.

Correct, you can split the disk pool into two arrays.

[shbris]

haha whats the old expression? "if you need to ask, you don't need it"