• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Do I really need RAID?

F

Frazas

Member
This question comes following a previous one that I made here at the beginning of the week on which of this boards should I get: the Iwill KK266-R or the Abit KT7A.

Well, one of the differences I noticed is the RAID being avalable on the KK266 and not on the KT7A. Besides from giving the KT7A a better price (because of not having RAID) what I would like to know is if the common user really needs RAID.

I have read some articles on what is RAID and to my (general) understanding RAID 0 splits the data on different drives and RAID 1 backs up the data on one of them.

Would I lose performance on my system? I have two very different drives. One is the IBM 75GXP 45Gb drive UDMA100 7200 rpm and a smaller Maxtor 15Gb UDMA66 5400 rpm.

In an article that I read about RAID said that I would have the performance of the worst drive on both of them, and that is very undesirable on my system.

I would also like to know if I bought a RAID system would I have to reformat both of the drives to get the RAID system to work? I ask this because I don't want to lose any of the data that I have on the drives.

And finaly, is there a way of disabling the RAID in the BIOS?

Thanks.
 
the KT7A doesn't have raid, but the KT7A-Raid obviously does...

If you use raid, get two of the same drive, it works best. And you don't have to use raid if you don't want to. You can even use the raid ide slots and use them just like any other ide slot.

Squibby
 
Would I lose performance on my system? I have two very different drives.

Yes - you will waste performance. You should only attempt RAID with a matched set of hard drives. Otherwise, you will waste the performance of the faster of two mismatched drives.

I would also like to know if I bought a RAID system would I have to reformat both of the drives to get the RAID system to work?

Yes.

And finaly, is there a way of disabling the RAID in the BIOS?

Yes.

Bottom line:

RAID enhances either speed or reliability.

Choose one, and it comes at the expense of the other. If you feel unsure about sacrificing speed for reliability, (or) reliability for speed, then you might want to rethink a RAID system.

 
I would say no, you have a 75gxp which is plenty fast enough...yeah, plenty fast enough 🙂

A slow hard drive will KILL system performance, but even the slowest 7200rpm HD's are good enough as to not destroy your system performance.
 


<< If you feel unsure about sacrificing speed for reliability...then you might want to rethink a RAID system. >>



I don't wanna pick a fight here, but I would disagree with that part of the statement. You sacrifice disk space for reliability, not speed. If mirroring (raid 1) is handled by the Raid controller, which in your case it is, you don't lose speed; you just lose disk space. If gsaldivar meant that you lose speed compared to using striping (raid 0), than I'd agree, but I'm not sure exactly what he meant... Anyway, I'm just trying to clarify this for you.

Striping takes away reliability because you double the impact of hard drive failure. If you have good luck with hard drives (like me and my brother who have used IBM drives without failure for a long time =P ), striping will almost double your read/write speed. But, if one drive fails, you'll lose everything.

Squibby
 
But could I only use the RAID connections as a normal IDE ATA 100 interface (without using the RAID) on a mobo that has RAID onboard?
 


<< But could I only use the RAID connections as a normal IDE ATA 100 interface (without using the RAID) on a mobo that has RAID onboard? >>


yes
 
That is the reason I bought the RAID version of the origianl KT7. With a burner, dvd, zip, and hard drive, that used all the regular IDE channels so I would have been forced to buy an external card anyway. So the sxtra $15 was worth it for me. I do not use it in any RAID configuration.
 
Having the extra IDE channels is the big benefit for getting a RAID equipped motherboard for the casual user. My next motherboard will probably be that way (at least as long as someone has a board offered with RAID and the nForce chipset 🙂 ).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top