SATA Drive questions

[Nick]

Cheers chaps, so RAID 0 it is!

I have one drive now and the other will be here on Friday, I'm guessing here, but I'll have to wait until I have both drives before I can install them as RAID 0? Or can I slap one drive in now, then do the other when it gets here?

[Nick]

and another question... what the hell are the jumper settings on the back? I get the whole IDE master/slave thing... but this is all new stuff to me..

[Blub2k]

You can make the array when the second one comes but if you have put anything on it before then you will need to back it up first as you will need to format after creating the array.

[directhex]

RAID 0 has to be RAID 0 from the outset, you have to wait until the second drive shows up before doing anything, and format the whole RAID 0 array.

[Bungle]

you will need both drives together

Edit:I'm slow off the mark!

[Blub2k]

He can use the first drive as long as he is aware that he will have to format it to make raid0. If you use the drive that you have now you will just have it as a single sata drive but can use it and format it into the raid0 array when the second one arrives.

[Blub2k]

Answer from WD on jumpers.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....ted=1050530240

[Bungle]

and another question... what the hell are the jumper settings on the back? I get the whole IDE master/slave thing... but this is all new stuff to me..

leave them as is and they will work straight out of the bubble wrap. No need to change the jumpers. Most SATA drives are jumperless

[Agent]

RAID 5 is complicated & i've forgotten how it works

Raid 5 is a compromise between RAID 1 and RAID 0. It can (in most cases), withstand the total loss of one drive due to using parity. It also has a performance increase over RAID 1, due to operating in a stripping nature.

I cant tell you the in's and out's of it either though, as its been a long time since i even looked / read about RAID 5.

[BlackSheep]

RAID 0 is a speed increase, you get N drive's worth of space from N drives, but if one drive fails then ALL your data is gone from every drive in the set.

RAID 1 is a reliability increase, where you get N/2 drive's worth of space from N drives. If one drive fails, the other drives will continue working fine, no data will be lost.

RAID 2, 3 and 4 aren't used any more.

RAID 5 is complicated & i've forgotten how it works.

Basically, if you want speed use RAID 0, if you want security use RAID 1

... and, not forgetting, for speed & security RAID 0+1 (or 1+0) ... RAID 5 is more common as you lose less space and it's fairly quick (faster reads than writes IIRC), but it's more complex to rebuild in the event of a disk failure.