Intel Matrix RAID - does anyone use it?

[dancingmatt]

Hi

I've got 2 250GB SATA1 drives and I'm thinking of using them on my new Asus P5W DH Deluxe board using Intel's Matrix RAID technology, so part of each drive would be a RAID0 stripe and part a RAID1 mirror. I have Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005.

Do you do this? Do you have two drives partitioned so you can run the two arrays? And if so, how do you have your files split between them - I'm thinking Windows, Programs and Games on the striped array for speed, and files/music/documents etc on the mirror for backup?

Thanks

DM

[kalniel]

Not got an intel, but almost wanted one for this alone I would have it exactly as you suggest

Thing I don't understand is what actually happens should a disk fail and you corrupt your system install? You'd still have to re-install windows but then can you get at your documents okay?

[dancingmatt]

I guess each hard drive has a separate partition and this can be accessed regardless of the RAID array? So you'd just install Windows etc. on the striped partition and this wouldn't affect the mirrored partitions. You'd then have to rebuild the mirror I think (although this might a matter of the RAID controller comparing the two hard drives' partitions and realising they're identical).

One interesting thing I've read is to bear in mind that a) the mirrored "drive" is fast for reading, since both drives can be read in parallel (so like a stripe in that regard) and b) since both the stripe and the mirror are on both drives, the stripe's performance can be hampered by the mirror's activity and vice versa.

DM

[steve_cronin]

Yep, I do; and I have tested it.
Specifically RAID 0 volume and RAID 1 volume on a pair of disks.
The OS is on the RAID 0, my data (Vista users directory) is on RAID 1. How that happened is the subject of another post and is not as straight forward as it should be.
Anyway, details of my test are on this post http://forums.hexus.net/2095594-post37.html
Mind you having only used RAID 0 for a long time (and backups to external disk for data protection), I only started using the RAID 1 facility recently as I had to replace one of the RAID 0 disks due to failure. So although I still keep offline backups, recovery turnaround with the mirror RAID for data means replacing the failed disk and doing some configuring in RAID bios, then restoring the OS from an image backup to the RAID 0 and the RAID 1 takes care of itself.

[GoNz0]

i gave up on pc raid, still run raid 5 on the NAS but i have a larger drive on the games rig so i am not putting my eggs into one basket.