new to raid0 and confused

Sasso

Sasso

Sasso

Soldato
Joined
7 Dec 2007
Posts
3,939
Location
Swansea, Wales
hello ive just received my new 2TB HDD :cool: so now im going to go and back up all my songs and documents onto it and then i want to set up my two 320gb drives into a raid0.

i am completely new to this and have no idea where to start tbh. been doing some reading up and bits confuse me.

do i need these drives in a perticular sata port on the mobo? read some where that some ports are locked or something and you want to use them for raid s overclocking wont effect them.... or something xP

what do i need to enable in the bios?

do i need to install drivers from a usb stick or is there and option when i go to do a fresh windows install?

anyother pointers i should be aware of?

also once ive got win7 64bit, office, adobe and some other things installed would it be advisable to make an image of this and store it on the 2TB drive, so if the raid fails i have an backup image? if so how ould i go about doing this and what would be the method of reinstating this image?

i fancy trying to get this done today/tomorrow so prompt answers will be rewarded with cake :D

oooo yes almost forgot, there a built on program or 3rd party software that will check my HDDs to make sure they are all working fine :) ? dont wana back up everything onto the new drive if its just gunna break xD
 
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You'll need to look at your mobo's manual, everyone is different, but usually they have to go into certain ports depending on how the mobo is setup. You shouldn't need to change anything in the BIOS though, but again depends on your mobo.

Raid drivers won't always be needed, Win7 may pick up your array straight away, if you do need them though, you will want them on a USB stick for when you do the install. (If the drive doesn't show in the install process, it means you will need drivers for it).

Normally you can get a testing disc off the Drive Manufacturer's website. Best thing though is to do a full format (for any new drive) as that will pick up any bad sectors. The thing with HDDs though is they will either fail early on in their life or late (when the drive is a few years old), and very rarely mid-life. If the drive works fine for the first few months you have it, you should be good for the life of the drive (usually).
 
ah cool thanks :) been reading through the manual... tis a little bit confusing to be honest :\
 
it's pretty easy, enable raid in your bios, save and exit bios. This will then give you a controller menu, with mine its crt+I when booting up you then have a menu says build raid, choose your 2 HD's and then name it and then follow the setup menu and save and exit. Your now have a Raid setup when you start windows it will see it as a HD. Its that simple.

You may have to make sure your got the right storaged drivers to get the best performance out of it.

Generally its really easy.
 
hardware raid is the best.
Click to expand...

For RAID0 or RAID1 there is no performance increase in using a (true) hardware SATA RAID cont. as opposed to using the ICH10R, they will basically perform the same; where the hardware RAID cont. does perform better is when using RAID5/6 when the onboard processor etc will perform the parity calculations rather than the cpu and hence give better writes...
 
:confused: IC what now? :p gunna start backing everything up now... might take a while haha xP so i just got to sata configuration, set it to raid, then it will ask me when i reboot what raid i wana do and what drives yea?
 
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