A Few RAID0 Questions

RobMunfy

RobMunfy

RobMunfy

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Joined
18 Mar 2007
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291
Hi guys,

Firstly, my current setup is a Samsung F1 320gb hdd partitioned off into 100gb for O/S and programs and the rest of the space is for games/files etc.

If I was to buy a 1TB disk:

1) Can I partition this off so that there is a 100gb partition and RAID0 this with my O/S partition.
2) Would I see any real performance increase if I was to RAID0 my games partition?
3) I was thinking of buying the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-049-HI) as it seems to be on a decent offer. Are these drives any good? Could I still use the RAID0 setup described above with the Samsung F1 or do the drives have to be the same type/size?

Cheers
 
1) Not entirely sure but if you are thinking you can Raid0 across an existing partition without losing any data then the answer is definitely not. I suspect you may have to Raid0 then partition but I may be wrong, also with Raid0 you only get the size of the smallest drive doubled.
2) Probably not, it works best for large contiguous blocks of files e.g. video/audio/sound editing but it may speed up loads slightly.
3) I don't know how good the Hitachis are but if you are using Raid0 then you get the size of the smallest drive doubled as I said above. The drives don't need to be exactly the same type/size but it is certainly better if they are to reduce the risk of the drives running out of sync and breaking the array.

Just in case it needs to be said, don't use Raid0 for anything that is vitally important that you cannot lose and remember you should have a backup strategy anyway.
 
ok, I was of the understanding that if I was to partition the drive as (for example) 100gb and 900gb, these would effectively be recognised as two different drives. Therefore I could RAID0 the F1 OS partition with the partition on the 1TB drive. Is this wrong?

If it doesn't make a difference, I wouldn't mind paying 10 pounds extra for the F1 1TB drive - I just need the extra space and was hoping to work RAID0 into it somehow :D
 
The problem with using an already partitioned drive and then combining it into a Raid0 array would be that you are using a logical drive (well two of them) to create another single logical drive (compared to a physical drive which would be the whole drive itself). I'm unsure if it would work but the only way to find out is to try it I suppose.
 
Ok, thanks a lot dude.

I suppose another issue would be with different sized caches. Has anyone had any success with setting up RAID0 on two logical partitions?
 
The only way you can set up "RAID0" between existing partitions is to use a striped dynamic volume within Windows. Problem with that is that most versions of Vista (and I assume Win7) don't support dynamic disks, plus you can't boot from it.
 
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