3 drive RAID 0 & 2 drive RAID 1 on same system

sgrinavi

Diamond Member
Jul 31, 2007
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I am going to be setting up my new R2E later this week and wanted to do a RAID 0 with 3 WD6400AAKS for the OS & APPS and, if possible, RAID 1 with a pair of Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB for my data.

(I had one of each of the drives already so it is an inexpensive, upgrade $90 for the 1TB drive and $140 for the pair of 640's)


Here's the stupid questions:

Will it work with the on-board RAID controller?

(Performance is an issue, but I am not the type to spend an extra $300 to get 5% )

Any particular reason I should, or shouldn't, use JMicron or the Intel Matrix?

I don't need 1.8 TB (3x640) for my OS/programs, does it make sense to partition the 640's so the OS (Vista Ultimate 64) is on the outside of the platters? I don't recall seeing that option available in the BIOS RAID setup... when do you do that?

(I have the OS & my apps installed on about 150 GB now; 640GB would probably be plenty)


Thanks



 

bigsnyder

Golden Member
Nov 4, 2004
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Researching this myself. If I remember correctly, you should be able to run multiple arrays from the onboard controller. As far as "short stroking" the drives, I believe this can be done when you set the partition size. Might be another step, but I am not aware of one yet. There is an article at Tom's Hardware on short stroking that is pretty decent, might be some more insight there.
 

sgrinavi

Diamond Member
Jul 31, 2007
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Thanks for your help, I went and read the manual. It looks pretty simple; I'm still not so sure about that short stroking, but I will find out soon!
 

Tweakin

Platinum Member
Feb 7, 2000
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The Intel matrix will do what you want and then some. In my second system, I have three WD640's in RAID0, but I only use 120GB from each disk resulting in a boot/system volume of 360GB.

I had tested all three many times with HD tach to determine where the performance starts to fall off (meaning I want to only use the outer portion of the disk for faster access times).

With all three running RAID0, HD Tach will show throughput up in the 160MB's.
 

sgrinavi

Diamond Member
Jul 31, 2007
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Originally posted by: Tweakin
The Intel matrix will do what you want and then some. In my second system, I have three WD640's in RAID0, but I only use 120GB from each disk resulting in a boot/system volume of 360GB.

I had tested all three many times with HD tach to determine where the performance starts to fall off (meaning I want to only use the outer portion of the disk for faster access times).

With all three running RAID0, HD Tach will show throughput up in the 160MB's.

Exactly what I want to do. You set that short stroke up in the Matrix Storage Manager?



Originally posted by: bigsnyder
Check out this thread from another forum. It gives step by step instruction on how to setup an array. Hope it helps!

Perfect, thanks~!