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Add new drives in Raid 0 array?

J

JoeyM

Senior member
I bought a pair of 300Gb SATA hard drives which I would like to add to an existing HTPC in a Raid 0 (600GB) array. I have an Abit 875P motherboard that supports software and hardware Raid.

1. How do I add the drives?

2. Will the power supply that came with my Antec Sonata case be enough to run these new drives, a pair of 36GB raptors run in Raid 0, ATI 9800 video, 2 DVD drives, fans, MB, and whatever else is in there? I think it's a 380W True power supply.

Thanks,

Joe M.
 
I'm assuming this drives are going to be used for file storage. I would not do a raid 0 array. The raptors should be the drives taking the abuse thus the raid array. That power supply might be cutting it close but you won't know until you try.
 
Originally posted by: amdskip
I'm assuming this drives are going to be used for file storage. I would not do a raid 0 array. The raptors should be the drives taking the abuse thus the raid array. That power supply might be cutting it close but you won't know until you try.
Click to expand...

good point, stripe the raptors and mirror the 300Gb's.
 
I want a monster drive for media files. The raptors are only 76GB combined and right now hold the operating system. I suppose I could keep each drive seperate. I have over 1000 CD's that I'm going to burn to .flac format for use with my Squeezebox 2 player.
 
Since these drives will just be storing audio files, there's no need for the (slight) read performance increase you'd get from putting them in a RAID array. If you really "must" have them all on one large volume, you can do it without taking the risk of losing everything if one of the drives fails.

Simply put both drives into the system as separate volumes, then create an NTFS pointer on one drive (a folder in the root would work) to the root of the other drive. You will still have a separate drive letter in My Computer for each drive, but you'll be able to navigate through Windows Explorer or your media player or whatever on the first drive and see all of the files on the second drive in the folder that is pointing to the second drive.

example:
Two drives are E: and F:.
Make a folder in the root of drive E: named "F_files" or something appropriate.
Use and NTFS pointer to direct the "F_files" folder to the root (or wherever the media files are) on drive F:.
Direct your media player playlists to the "F_files" folder on E: to play the files on drive F:.


Or, just put the files on the two separate drives and set up your playlists to pull the files from whatever drive they are stored on. 😛
 
Thanks all. I guess I'll store music on each drive seperately (maybe one for Rock and one for Jazz/classical). For Squeezebox to play the music. I must specify a directory for it to search. How can I put both drives into one directory? And what is a "NTFS pointer" and how is it used?

Thanks,

Joe
 
There is no such thing as an NTFS "pointer", but there is such a thing called a Junction Point. Either look in the Microsoft 2003Reskit (http://microsoft.com/reskit) or System Internals (sysinternals.com) for linkd and junction, respectively.
 
Originally posted by: Homerboy
RAID5 is your best option.
Click to expand...

I'd love to do RAID 5 but that would mean buying a whole new computer. Plus it requires more knowledge than I have.

Joe
 
Originally posted by: JoeyM
Originally posted by: Homerboy
RAID5 is your best option.
Click to expand...

I'd love to do RAID 5 but that would mean buying a whole new computer. Plus it requires more knowledge than I have.

Joe
Click to expand...

Not really. Just get a Promise RAID-5 SATA card and hook the drives up. You'll need three drives minimum for RAID-5, and you lose the capacity of one drive. e.g.:

3x 300GB drives in RAID-5 = total capacity of 600GB.

However, if one drive dies, then the array keeps on running; replace the failed drive and let it rebuild and you're done, no data lost.
 
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