Brief help on RAID for a newbie

[dprocket]

Hello all. I am getting ready to move up to a new MOBO and CPU, and will probably grab an AMD 64 chip to replace my Thoroughbread.

I have picked several hard drives cheaply over the past year and have about 3 brand new unopened drives in my closet that I've been saving for a new system and/or for when I work on family computers.

Since I'm getting a new MOBO, I'm considering setting up a RAID for these new drives, but to be honest, I know next to nothing about them.

Basically, what I think a RAID will do for me is allow my to set up 4-5 HDs that will work in tandem. I've been doing more and more video editing projects and am often times dealing with gigantic files and have been running out of disc space. I figure using a RAID wll allow my to expand my storage capacity and also put to use the HDs that I already have.

Am I correct in my assumption about what a RAID can do for me? And if so, is there anything special I should look for in a Mobo based on what i'll be using it for? It's strictly for home use. I am looking at the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe or the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D or something along those lines.

 

[foodfightr]

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/index.htm

 

[RichUK]

Raid 0 = half the data on one drive the other half on the other drive, thus resulting in I.E. 100Mb operating system on raid 0, 50Mb on one drive and 50Mb on another, yet the OS sees the hard drives as one hard drive, thus 2x100Gb HDD's seen as 200Gb physical on the OS, good for performance and disk enlargement, but very poor for integrity, as if one drive goes down you lose everything, as an example an mp3 will be split in two, and you can not run half a file if one of the drives go down... it also reads off both HDD's at the same time so the throughput (if using two controllers on like nforce 4) is higher "very bad explanation i know"

Raid 1 = duplicates the info onto 2 hard drives so you have an exact duplicate, good for system critical so you can easily backup, but bad for Gb's for buck, as you are effectively halving it as apposed to RAID 0 when you are doubling it.. i think RAID 1 just updates to both HDD's but reads off of one

Raid 0+1= RAID 1 but reads off of both Hard drives at the same time thus giving Raid 0 performance,

Raid 5= is what you will be looking for this allows you to, add 3 or more HDD's into a sort of Raid 0 style array, im not sure if you can have the backup option aswell from RAID 1 for instance .. 2 x 50Gb HDD's in RAID 0 but the 3rd hard drive is 100Gb and backs up all of the RAID 0 data .. do you get me (lol probably not my expo leaves alot to be desired)..

you also have a JBOD option which stands for (Just A Bunch Of Disks), this is where you have IDE, SATA, SCSI HDD's any size and just chuck'em all together and you have alot of hdd space, and is seen as one HDD by the OS, the thing with this is that if one drive goes down then you dont lose all of the information like RAID 0 you just lose what ever is stored on that HDD, but there is no performnace hike from this just expanded disk space on a drive that is seen as one ..


To have RAID you will either need a mobo with a native RAID controller i.e. nforce 3 or 4, "or some mobo's come with the old silicon chips that support RAID", these are controllers for either SATA, or PATA, or you will need an add in PCI card with a RAID controller on it "this includes SCSI aswell"..


and thats my poor explanation of RAID ..

RichUK



EDIT: or you can just check the above link .. probably better explained