I have a good/easy IDE RAID Question, Anybody want to help?

[JmanSanDiego]

Okay, I'm setting up my new machine, debating on whether or not to go with RAID. (Abit KG7-Raid Motherboard). Here are my needs and concerns. Eventually I want to do some DV capture which I know a standalone hard drive could handle just fine. Using Windows 2000, if I were to use my system drive as a standalone and RAID (0) up a couple of drives as my capture drive, it would seem that I am wasting the capabilities of the RAID as A) I won't be capturing all that often and B) I dont' really need RAID speed for Firewire/DV Capture.

Do I...

Forget the RAID all together or do I setup a RAID, use it as my System/Boot drive thus gaining the speed advantage of RAID then partition that volume into multiple partitions so I can keep a capture "drive letter" seperate? Figure this scenerio...

(2) 40Gib Seagate IV IDE Drives implemented in RAID 0 for approximately 80Gigs of space. Partition the drive with 20Gigs for Drive C (System) and 60Gigs for Drive D (Capture).

Can you partition safely with an IDE RAID configuration?

Anyhow, any help would be appreciated and I sure hope that someone else is looking into answers for these questions as well.

Jon

 

[NeonFlak]

I have never successfully partitioned a raid setup. I would use the raid setup just because your board has raid on it already. However the seagate IV aren't the fastest drives on the block. The Maxtor D740x are nice drives, fastest IDE out right now. They are also pretty cheap. But if you don't think you need to spend the extra money to get another hd, or two more and if you don't think you need the performance increase or the hassle than it's a moot decision. If you don't think you need it you don't need. I can't tell you I think you need it =)

 

[JmanSanDiego]

Well, that's cool. I won't bother then with the RAID drive being the capture drive, but I now need to determine if I want to use a RAID setup as my system drive to speed up boot up times, program loading, or whatever....

Is anybody out there using RAID 0 as a system disk? Is it worth the speed benefit? Do you actually NOTICE that it is significantly faster?

Jon