Couple of RAID questions.

just Scott · 7 Dec 2006 at 17:37

Hey. I've decided I want to setup a RAID0 array when I order my new hard drives (my current ones are very old and not enough space). I'm thinking about ordering 2x Seagate Barraduca 7200.10 320GB drives and put them in RAID0. (I'm still open to consideration, I can buy any two hard drives, I just don't want to spend millions on large Raptors)

Now, my motherboard uses "NVRAID" and I've heard from a few people it's quite troublesome. So, after searching this hard drive forum I've come up with a list of things I need to do to set this up (this will be the first time I've used RAID, so I'm still quite unsure about it). If this is correct, can someone confirm please.

1. Enable NVRAID on my ASUS A8N-E from the BIOS
2. Set one of the 7200.10s to primary master and the other to secondary master.
3. Reboot computer, press F10 to go into the NVRAID Utility and add both hard disks to the "array" section, set the RAID mode to "striping" and memory block mode to 128k (is this the best option?)
4. After finishing the RAID setup, put XP CD in, press F6 to install RAID drivers from Floppy disk which I have already made.
5. Carry on, set partitions or whatever (do the drives need formatting?)
6. Install Windows

Sound alright? Or am I missing any steps.

Sorry if I didn't make much sense with the list, this is new to me, this RAID stuff.

Thanks to anybody who reads.

just Scott · 8 Dec 2006 at 20:05

Actually, it doesn't matter. Even though the chances of a hard driving failing are low, I don't want to risk 1 failing and losing both hard drives' data.

I'll just stick with two drives running normally.

celliott · 8 Dec 2006 at 20:32

If you use RAID0 both drives contain the same data. If one drive dies you can still run from the other one.

rpstewart · 8 Dec 2006 at 20:41

You're thinking of RAID1. RAID0 spilts the data equally across the disks in the array and hence if one drive dies all the data in the entire array is lost.

just Scott · 8 Dec 2006 at 22:01

rpstewart said:
You're thinking of RAID1. RAID0 spilts the data equally across the disks in the array and hence if one drive dies all the data in the entire array is lost.

Yeah that's what I wanted to do.

Would you recommend RAID0?

It's very important I don't lose any data. Although I do have 2x 80GB Maxtors I could backup it up on...

rpstewart · 8 Dec 2006 at 22:10

If data integrity is important then RAID0 is not for you, if you run 2*320Gb disks in RAID0 you'll potentially end up with 640Gb of data to keep backed up.

The only benefit of RAID0 is improved read & write speeds but you need to decide if this is worth the risk of losing all the data if one drive fails.

just Scott · 8 Dec 2006 at 22:15

rpstewart said:
If data integrity is important then RAID0 is not for you, if you run 2*320Gb disks in RAID0 you'll potentially end up with 640Gb of data to keep backed up.

The only benefit of RAID0 is improved read & write speeds but you need to decide if this is worth the risk of losing all the data if one drive fails.

Do the chances of drives failing increase while using RAID?

I've had these one of those two Maxtors for 3-4 years with no problems at all. My other Maxtors I've had for over a year with no problems either...

How prone are the Barracuda 7200.10's and Raptor X 150GB to failing?

And yeah I know I'll need to back up 640GB w/ 2*320GB hard drives, but I wouldn't need to backup the whole drives

rpstewart · 8 Dec 2006 at 22:37

H2F Scott said:
Do the chances of drives failing increase while using RAID?

No, simply running RAID will not increase the chance of a single drive failing but because you have 2 drives in the array the chance of the array failing is double that of a single drive.