HELP!! Question on RAID 5...

[mikeyngo]

Hello. I currently have 4 45 GIG IBM Deskstar hard drives 7200 RPM. I was thinking of using RAID 5 for this matter. I know I must have at least 5 hard drives. Was planning to buy a 80+ gig 7200 rpm hard drive, just for the windows 2000 itself.

My question is, would i need my 5th hard drive to equal the amount of gigs i have on the other hard drive (ie, 45 gig?) Is running RAID 5 has the same speed advantage as RAID 0? If so, which is faster, RAID 5 or 0?

I'm going all out for speed.

Plus I've nevered done a RAID setup before, so any web sites pertaining a step-by-step guide to setup my RAID 5 or 0 would be very much appreciated. Like adding a disc array, partition all hard drive into one, and installing windows. etc.. etc..

Helping me would very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Michael

 

[GiGoLo]

Taken from my ABIT TH7II- RAID mobo manual

"
RAID 0
- min of 2 drives required
- characteristics/strengths - Highest I/O Performance, very simple design, easy to implement
- weaknesses - no redundancy, one drive fails, all data is lost
.
.
.
RAID 5
- min of 3 drives required
- characteristics/strengths - Highest Read data transaction rate, medium write data transaction rate, best cost/performance for transaction-oriented networks, supports multiple, simultaneous read and write, low ratio of ECC (parity) disks to data disks means high efficiency
- weaknesses - Write performance is slower than RAID 0 or RAID 1


as for setting up the raid array, Raid 0 is quite simple... go into your raid bios (usually ctrl-h), goto create raid array, select what RAID mode you want (in this case striping RAID 0), select the drives you want, choose your block size (most people leave this at default), then press ENTER to start the creation process.
once its created, simply boot to your OS CD and partition and format from the Windows Setup

 

[mikeyngo]

Thanks for the info. However, with 4 45 GIG Hard Drive, and with a extra 80 gig. Would the 80 gig only be used as 45 gig also? Or is it better off only using 45 Gig. I want to be able to have a seperate partition for windows in case somethings go wrong.

 

[Workin']

How do you plan on building the array? Using a hardware RAID controller or through the software in Windows NT/2000? No built-in motherboard RAID controllers support RAID 5 in hardware, and inexpensive cards from Promise or that use the Highpoint chip don't do RAID 5 either. Your only choice for IDE RAID 5 in hardware is using a Promise SuperTrak card, an Adaptec 2400 IDE RAID card, or a 3ware Escalade-series card. Or using the software in Windows NT/2000, in which case it doesn't matter what kind of controller your drives are connected to.

Let me know how you plan to run the array and I'll tell you how to do it. I don't want to type out both ways if I don't have to

 

[Woodie]

It's pretty difficult to setup RAID 5 using IDE...it really works much better w/ SCSI.
Also, I don't think software RAID 5 is available w/ W2K Prof...only w/ Server. (Not positive about this!)

 

[Workin']

<< It's pretty difficult to setup RAID 5 using IDE...it really works much better w/ SCSI. >>

Not really true. If you have an IDE RAID controller that supports RAID 5 it's a breeze to set up.

<< Also, I don't think software RAID 5 is available w/ W2K Prof...only w/ Server. (Not positive about this!) >>

That could be true - I have Advanced Server set up with a 4x40GB RAID 5 array using 2kAS' software RAID. It was also extremely easy to set up and works much better than I thought it would.

 

[Woodie]

In terms of difficulty, I was thinking more along the lines of:
Get 3 IDE drives
Plug each one into a seperate cable
Make sure you only have one device per cable
Connect your CD to yet another cable
Make sure it can boot
Make sure the controller can see all the drives

vs:
Plug all your scsi devices into one cable
Connect the cable to your controller
Make sure it can boot
Make sure the SCSI termination is correct
Make sure the controller can see all the drives

SCSI is much simpler (more elegant) from a cabling/location/connection perspective.

 

[Workin']

<< SCSI is much simpler (more elegant) from a cabling/location/connection perspective. >>

Not to argue, I just have a different perspective. It's not too much more difficult to put each device on its own cable as it is to put them all on one, I don't think. And most "IDE people" are baffled by SCSI ID numbers and termination, not because it's hard, just because it's not what they are used to.

Anywho - I just noticed this:

<< I'm going all out for speed. >>

Then pick RAID 0 if you don't need redunancy, or RAID 0+1 if you do, those would be the fastest.

 

[mikeyngo]

Thanks for the response. I have a ABKTI-Kr7a raid board with the highland thing. Hardware raid. Anyways, I'm just planning to run 4 45 GIG IBM hard drives as raid, AT RAID 0.

So basically I would go into the RAID menu, and select every hard drive as STRIPPING MODE? and then partition all the hard drives as 1 Pimary hard drive? Then load in my windows 2000 CD, and format it into NTFS and install it?

Would I need to do anything else? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks. I hope this raid setup would be faster from wut i had before without raid of 5400 hard drives. I hope windows would load faster, and applications.

Another question, if my raid is already setup, and I use NORTON SPEED DISK. would that have any affect on my raid setup? would it defrag correctly?

Cheers,
Mike