Some Questions on RAID

[Clstrphbc_donut]

All night, i have been searching the internet looking to gain knowledge of RAID, its setups, advantages and disadvantages of each type. It's still quite blurry, although i am getting the general idea. I NEED to know what i'm doing, as i want to hook up two 36GB Raptors. I have 2 SATA connectors onboard. I was thinking of doing a striped array (RAID-0). Is this best for overall performance? Do they fail a lot? When it says that striping basically means the 2 drives become one (am i right?) then, the two raptors mentioned above will become 1 72GB(ish) drive? Im really trying to grasp this, but its a bit difficult because i have no-one to answer my questions when looking over webpages at guides etc. So, i brought my out-standing queries to you lot Hope you can help me, and i just hope i havent asked for more complications. Thanks in advance

[chiyau]

yes when you raid the drives your pc will detect it as one drive (72GB). i've personally not had any problems with raid (touch wood) but if one drive breaksdown then all your data will be lost so it best to have another drive to store/backup important files.

[chiyau]

another thing you need to know is the Stripe size (128k, 64k, 32k, 16k) which will effect the performance of your drives. if you do a lot of work with big files such as video editing then it is recommended that you use a large stripe like 128k. if you play a lot of games then i recommend 16k or 32k stripe or a compromise of 64k.

[Clstrphbc_donut]

well its mainly gonna be for windows, programs and documents. Then i will have 2 200GB IDE drives as storage, plus the 30GB and 40GB i have at the moment as other storage.

Mainly, i just need the speed. Yes, i could make a games directory within the windows disk. I do a bit of audio editing (making tracks a higher KBPS, and changing mp3 --> wav --> mmf (Samsung mobile phone tone format), and a bit of photoshop. But not any video editing

[Shorty]

Raid Junkie here

What motherboard and what controller are you going to be running this all on?

Il do you a major build guide that works, with raptors

FYI.. Im running 2 x 36gb Raptors on a promise 378, 32k stripe with 32k NTFS clusters which easily hits 110+ in ATTO ..

btw.. Id suggest running a backup app every few days (or nightly in my case when Im home) that puts all your RAIDed data onto another disk. Raptors get hot, they are also prone to failure more than other drives.

http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage does the job like magic. Do one full backup when you install Windows, then set a scheduled task which incrementally backs up new and changed data. When one of my raptors died, it was a damn lifesaver

[BlackSheep]

Raid Junkie here

Raptors get hot, they are also prone to failure more than other drives.

http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage does the job like magic. Do one full backup when you install Windows, then set a scheduled task which incrementally backs up new and changed data. When one of my raptors died, it was a damn lifesaver

I thought Raptors leant towards SCSI build quality (5 year warranty as well) which should make them more reliable not less? SCSI drives run hotter than IDE (generally) but they are far more reliable as they need to be (usually used for business workstations/servers).

[Clstrphbc_donut]

Im using the motherboard in the 1st machine in my sig (Asus P4P800) but i read a thread saying using motherboard sata is not reccommended

Shorty, thanks, a guide would be brilliant. If i set it up without one, i'd guess, then cross my fingers.

EDIT: Got the mobo manual out, and if im looking at the right one the chipsets a "Intel ICH5R w/ RAID 0 support"

EDIT 2: The ICH5R is my southbridge

[Shorty]

I thought Raptors leant towards SCSI build quality (5 year warranty as well) which should make them more reliable not less? SCSI drives run hotter than IDE (generally) but they are far more reliable as they need to be (usually used for business workstations/servers).

Not raptors. Don't confuse the two. A bridged IDE to SATA drive with a higher rotational speed does not make an enterprise drive

Read a few storage forums and see just how unreliable they can be. They are great but at a price. Although they are marketed as "enterprise", no way would I put those into a customers site.

I have two of them, both have had been RMA-ed. So have several of my friends Raptors. Im not saying all are bad, but they are more prone to failure than others.. and I have plenty of cooling in my rig blowing across them to make sure they aren't frying

Clstrphbc... Il post some information and stuff up later