Going to attempt Raid0 - Advice?

[j03h4gLund]

I know pretty much nothing about RAID except from what my network administrator at work told me, which if I understood him correctly; RAID0 would be the best for performance(two drives act like one) while RAID1 would be the best for times when a drive fails(mirror'd drives).

I use a 64GB SSD(in sig.) for my boot drive with win7 64bit installed and would like to use my old sata drives as backup drives and am thinking I would purchase 2 1TB or .5TB Samsung F3 drives and put them in RAID0.

What should I know before I attempt this installation? The specifications from my motherboard are confusing to me - Do I need a RAID controller card or am I right to believe it is built in? Are there any bios changes that should be made? Optimizations in my OS/Registry?

What are two drives you would recommend for RAID0 for performance and reliability? The Samsung F3 seems to be the favorite around here but am open to other brands. My budget is $300.

Thanks for reading. :twisted:

 

[exdeath]

Best advice : Make a backup. Then keep it up to date.

 

[j03h4gLund]

Not too worried about backup, more-so performance.

Yes I know SSD's are the best for this but the price per GB just isn't where I am comfortable paying for 1TB of disk space.

 

[groberts101]

Just flyin' by here so I'll be brief for now. My best advice is that.. if you don't know much about raid?.. don't do it.

If you do study up on it to get familiar with the pro's and con's for help to establish a proper gameplan?.. you will love the speed and time saved from its implementation.

Your Intel controller will support enough HDD(up to 6) in R1 or R0 without issue or loss in speed. Read your mobo manual to learn how to set it up and build the array.

Never put important data on an R0 array unless you have a standalone single HDD to back it up. You could go years without issue.. but if and when you do have one?.. you'll surely wish you had that data backed up to a single drive.

And brand preference is just that... Brand preference. Not many reliable sources out there to establish exactly which ones are better. I've used Seagate in R0 for years and have had no issues. Some will say the opposite. Had some decent luck with WD too.

Just buy what you like since most are about the same speeds these days and proper cabling, voltage, and airflow can help make just about any HDD live a very long time.

Good luck with it all

 

[masteryoda34]

RAID 0 is NOT suitable for backup purposes. It has twice the risk of failure. The advantage of RAID 0 is performance, which is not important (relatively) for a backup volume.

You should use RAID 1 for a backup volume. RAID 1 is pretty simple.

 

[j03h4gLund]

I understand that raid0 is not good for backing up data and has an increased chance of data corruption. None-the-less, I'm not looking for a backup solution, rather a high-performance setup.

How long before 500gb SSD's are around $250?

 

[nanaki333]

i've had the same samsung spinpoint F1 1TB drives in raid0 since my c2q system. it's never failed yet (thank goodness for intel raid compatibility). not everyone gets that lucky though. like others said, make backups of your important data to disc or disk