Help me with setting up RAID please

[ibex333]

**CLOSED I changed my mind about RAID**


I haven't decided 100% yet if I want to try RAID, but I want to at least make sure that I'll be able to for now.


This topic will be updated as I go through all the steps necessary...

Step 1: I am planning to buy two WD 200 GB SATA-300's from
MicroCenter and run them in RAID. I will add my old HD for backup.

Unless the above setup will be slower than a 320 GB SATAII Seagate, I'm going with dual WD's.

Anyway. I have a problem, because I DONT have a floppy drive, so I wont be able to use the RAID disk that came with my mobo. Is there any workaround? Can I dl the driver somewhere and install it fro ma CD or USB drive?

**CLOSED I changed my mind about RAID**

 

[Captante]

(1) The two WD 200gb drives in RAID 0 will be slightly faster then a single Seagate 320gb 7200.10 , but the difference will be small & if one of the drives fails you'll lose all the data on both of them. My advice would be to go with the two 200gb WD's, but either install them in RAID 1 which won't be any faster then a single drive but at least protects you from mechanical disk failure, or better yet install them as 2 seperate drives.

(2) Wether you'll be needing a floppy drive depends on the OS you'll be installing & wether you end up doing RAID or not ... Win XP setup still looks for RAID drivers only on a 3.5 floppy drive while Vista will allow you to use a flash-drive or a CDR to install the driver. If you elect not to go with RAID, Vista or XP SP2 should be able to see your SATA drives in setup so the driver disk shouldn't be required... this depends more on the SATA controller used by your motherboard though, so refer to your manual.