Is it worth it to get a raid board with ddr or is raid overblown?

[BAMAVOO]

I myself have like my raid on board but does it really make a differnce to you guys? I am thinking about going to a p4 or a xp and a new mobo..should I go after raid or not worry about it?
Thanks
Bam

 

[AkumaBao]

Why not? Hell, you don't even have to use it, but sometime you'll be glad you have it.

 

[rondeemc]

I have only tried raid a couple of times. Based on some reviews of how it works it really is dependent on how you use your system. That said you might consider one of the boards that lets you use the RAID ide's as regulars so that if you have the need to run more the 4 ide devices you don't have to go out and buy another card. That is why I picked up the Soyo Dragon + so I had the option. A jumper controls the setting for RAID or extra IDE. I not sure if I can recommend that board at this time because I am having some issues with my newest setup that are as yet unresolved. Could be a couple of things including an IBM drive that appears to be going south on me. That an the mic option does not work as well as my old Live card.

In my case I need the option of five IDE so this was about the cheapest way to go...that plus I wanted on-board nic and sound.

 

[Willoughbyva]

Really it is all in what you need. Raid can be set up so that you can span two or more drives, or it can be set up to mirror drives (depending on the raid controller options, all are not alike). In raid systems where they span drives the write time is a lot better=faster, but most often the read time is worse=slower. In the old days spanning drives was good because you could keep up with importing huge files from digital video cameras. Now the newer 7200 drives do just fine like they are and they are now big enough that you don't really need to span a drive for the space. Also with raid you have to worry about flakey controllers and drivers. There are a couple good ones out there that offer good controllers and drivers, but sometimes there still may be problems. It is recommended that you use identical drives to set up your raid array. Instead of a raid controller I try to stick to motherboard solutions that offer two additional regular ide controllers. Some raid controllers allow you to have a hard drive installed as a single array, but depending on the controller you may run into problems with more than that. Most of the time you can not hook up cd and cdrw drives to the raid controller.

Hope this helped a little.

Will

 

[BAMAVOO]

Thanks for the responses but, I have raid now!!! I know what it does and all that..Is it really faster or is it really needed? I mean if I get a 1.6a northwood and crank it up to 2.2 without raid is it going to be as fast as my 1.4@1.6 with raid??? Guess I should have asked it that way

 

[Athlon4all]

RAID for the common user is worthless, and not worth the risk. If you want a faster HD, get 10k or 15k SCSI

 

[Haden]

I just got second IBM 60GXP, made RAID (with old modified Ultra66) and I couldn't wipe smile from my face for about hour
Lets say my system flies now (I think double cache size is also very important factor).
Get RAID if you can.

 

[dooddk]

I got a supermicro P3TDDE with onboard promise raid, invested in 2 Seagate barracuda IV drives , fired it up, and haven`t stopped grinning since.
The people that tell you not to get it cos it`s "an insignificant increase" are those that haven`t had it running on their own systems.
And by the way.......IT ROCKS,
D.

 

[mike2fix]

I recently implemented Raid on my 1600XP system and I was pretty impressed. It was considerably faster with no other changes, I was very surprised at the difference. I consider changes that I notice in use, not with benchmarks, as important. It made a believer out of me.

 

[yngtm27]

RAID increases load and boot times. It's also excellent for manipulation of large files which is of course very useful for video editing. Not going to increase performance significantly in games or everyday tasks. Like the others have said even if you're not going to use RAID you still have the option to use 4 more IDE devices for a total of 8 which is nice.

 

[Mustanggt]

I would rather have raid then not have it, i notice very little gains in basics tasks but large files load very fast.