Proposed PC upgrade - A few questions about RAID 10 and SLI

paul806

paul806

paul806

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9 Jul 2011
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Hi guys,

My PC is currently as follows;

CoolerMaster GX650W
Asus P8Z68-V Pro
Intel i5 2500k
Corsair H50 CPU cooler
OCZ Platinum 2x 2GB 1333MHz CL7 DDR3
Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm 16MB Cache
MSI GTX 560-Ti 1GB Twin Frozr II OC
Asus Xonar DG
Samsung BD-ROM.

Recently I purchased 2 Samsung SpinPoint 500GB 7200rpm 16MB Cache HDDs. My intention was to boost performance by running the new pair in RAID 0 with my WD disk as a backup for important data and OS image etc. It was only after I purchased them that I realized that my chipset won't support the use of a disk not in RAID configuration whilst using RAID mode. I could run them in RAID 0 but I feel a bit uneasy about it without any fault tolerance.

I've decided that the best option may be just to go ahead and purchase a 4th drive and use a RAID 10 configuration. Is this possible with the two different brands of drive? Does anyone think this is a waste of time and money? I welcome any advice. If it is a good idea, would I be best to get another of the WD drives so I have 2 identical pairs?

The other thing is that I'm really tempted to get a second GPU, having read great things about my card's SLI performance. I used a PSU recommendation calculator with my full set up (including the 4 HDDs) and factoring in a potential CPU overclock to 4GHz and it came out with a 589W requirement. Do you think my 650W PSU is really sufficient to cope under load?

Thanks very much for your time, I look forward to your feedback.

Paul :)
 
Cooler master psus aren't exactly the most reliable so I wouldn't really risk it to be honest. What resolution do you play at? The 560ti is still a great card on is own :).
 
Hi and welcome to the forum.

RAID 10 is not really a backup solution, it's for redundancy.

If one disk fails you can carry on using the system until you replace the failed disk.

It's not a backup because if your PC is stolen, destroyed in a fire or suffers a catastrophic failure you've lost all your data.

It can happen. I'm sitting here with a friend's PC which had 4 drives in RAID 10. I don't know what they did to it (you never hear the full story) but the RAID has been lost along with all their data.

The only true backup would be an external solution which can be kept separate from your PC and ideally in another location altogether.

As far as the PSU goes I would suggest looking around the 750W-800W mark as you wouldn't want it to be running at 100% capacity.
 
Thanks for the swift reply!

Yeah it is a great card on its own, it's just so tempting though, having just been paid! I play at 1920x1080 on a 22". I find it a bit bizarre that Crysis 2 plays very nicely and looks stunning, whereas the original plays really poorly and looks average after having played a bit of the 2nd!

Really? I've never heard anything negative about the CM PSUs. Wouldn't have bought one if I had...

Any thoughts on my proposed RAID set up?
 
Ok, thanks for the advice.

Would you suggest I just use RAID 0 for the drives I have, in that case? I could backup important stuff on DVDs and on my 15GB online storage that comes with my Webroot subscription, I guess.
 
paul806 said:
Ok, thanks for the advice.

Would you suggest I just use RAID 0 for the drives I have, in that case? I could backup important stuff on DVDs and on my 15GB online storage that comes with my Webroot subscription, I guess.
Click to expand...

RAID 0 should be faster but if one drive fails everything is lost so making backups is even more important.

I would suggest that rather than use DVD's you use the WD drive in a USB 3.0 external enclosure, or dock, as a backup.
 
Surveyor said:
I would suggest that rather than use DVD's you use the WD drive in a USB 3.0 external enclosure, or dock, as a backup.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a great idea! Are enclosures for internal SATA drives to be used as USB externals easy to find from retailers? After a quick look on the OCUK online store, I couldn't see anything, though admittedly I've not tried very hard yet. Would the chipset support the use of such a USB drive that isn't in the array if the SATA ports are configured for RAID, do you know?

I really appreciate the advice, thanks.
 
paul806 said:
Sounds like a great idea! Are enclosures for internal SATA drives to be used as USB externals easy to find from retailers? After a quick look on the OCUK online store, I couldn't see anything, though admittedly I've not tried very hard yet. Would the chipset support the use of such a USB drive that isn't in the array if the SATA ports are configured for RAID, do you know?

I really appreciate the advice, thanks.
Click to expand...

You're welcome.

There's a whole section of caddies and docks here:

Caddies & Accessories

Something like this enclosure:

Akasa Noir S 3.5" USB 3.0 Enclosure

Or this dock:

Sharkoon SATA QuickPort XT USB3.0

Both are USB 3.0 (which your motherboard supports) so are completely unaffected by the way your SATA ports are configured.

Personally I use a dock as I have several external hard drives and it's cheaper to buy one dock than several enclosures.
 
Ah, I didn't find that section of the store!

Brilliant. In that case I shall order one, probably a dock, and run the 2 SpinPoints in RAID 0.

I'll also forget about the SLI set up (...for now!)

Thanks for your time!
 
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