GB 990FXA-UD5 - Raid Setup Questions....

[TheMightySpud]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help me out some as I know pretty much nothing about Raid.

As the title says I have a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 which I absolutely love.

Connected to the board I have 3xWD Green 1tb, 1xSeagate 2tb, 1xSamsung 2tb and 1xWD Green 2tb drives.

All these drives are going to be replaced over the next 2 months and was thinking of setting them up in Raid.

Now, my knowledge of Raid is pretty much this..... I know what a Striped Array is and what a Mirrored Array is.....but I have no clue how these relate to all the numbers (ie. Raid 0, Raid 1 etc) (For this I would want a Striped Array)

Soooo, I have some questions that I hope someone will be able to answer....

1/ When setting up a new Raid Array, do the Hard drives get reformatted? (ie, if I set up the drives I currently have, will I lose everything on those drives)

2/ What, if any, is the actual real world benefit of setting up drives in Raid? Is it performance/stability etc.

3/ Does anyone know of any step by step 'idiot' guides to setting up a Raid Array? (From what I understand it doesn't need to be specific to the board I have, but it would be handy if there were one.)

I think that covers everything at the moment.

Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer

TheMightySpud

 

[Mitzy]

1. Yes.
2. Depends how you set it up. RAID0 = performance & RAID1 = redundancy.
3. You don't need a guide. Hit Control + I at boot up, configure your array boot from windows cd, install the raid drivers that came with your mobo. Enjoy.

Alternatively just google "setting up RAID step by step"