Spec Me A Raid

littledave · 29 Jan 2007 at 17:49

Ok

Just about to do a reload and reformat as my system is slowing down abit, i have decided to give Raid ago as i hear its a great performance increase for gaming and stuff.

This is what i have:-
2 x 74Gb Raptors
2 x 120Gb Seagates ST3120026AS

What do you think is the best Raid for performance.

semi-pro waster · 29 Jan 2007 at 18:04

Well for pure performance you pick your two quickest drives (here the Raptors) and put them in a Raid0 array, however Raid0 has no redundancy built in so is not proper Raid (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives is one way of explaining the acronym) and depending on your uses may not be that much faster as it only really starts to show a benefit when moving around large contiguous files such as video or audio etc.

If you have a good backup routine and you know the risks then a Raid0 array using the Raptors is what you want.

littledave · 29 Jan 2007 at 22:04

So am i right in thinking that i create the array in the raid bios then just install xp as normal, or do i need a 3rd party driver, cos i dont have a floppy drive atm.

Cob · 29 Jan 2007 at 22:35

XP needs RAID drivers.

littledave · 29 Jan 2007 at 22:46

Shame cos i cant find my driver CD, NV Raid is the faster of the two controllers on the board correct?

Striping and a block siae of 128 are these the settings that will give the best performance.

semi-pro waster · 30 Jan 2007 at 00:47

It depends slightly on what you want to do but those are pretty normal settings for Raid0. As Cob says though you will need to install Raid drivers for XP as it doesn't automatically recognise Raid arrays (Vista might but that isn't the question here of course), you could slipstream them onto a Windows CD using nLite or similar though I suppose if necessary.