Need some helpwith RAID

[ICEVaPa]

Hey guys,

Im buying a new HD soon and was wondering if it would be benificial, and possible to run RAID.

at present my mother board is the GA-8IPE1000-L (Rev 2.x) LINK

And my current HD is the segate ST3120026AS and im going to buy the segate ST3160827S.

Now my qustions...

Is it possiblt to run RAID on that motherboard?

Does it matter that the hardrives are not identical?

Would you recomend it?

Is it fairly easy to do?

Thanks

ICE


(Id probably do RAID 0)

 

[jondercik]

Doesnt look to be raid compatible.

Ideally on a desktop system you will run RIAD 1 (mirroring) so its best if the drives are identical.

 

[obeseotron]

Actually a lot of people with desktop systems run RAID0, not RAID1, whether this is a smart thing to do is another question. Your motherboard uses ICH5, which has no RAID function and doesn't look like it has any 3rd party SATA controller either. 2 port PCI SATA RAID cards go for about $20 with a Silicon Image controller, they are limited by the PCI bus to some extent, but not in any noticable way with only a 2 drive array. It also gives you an easy way to keep the RAID intact when you switch motherboards. RAID0 arrays can be very tricky, if not impossible to maintain when switching controllers, which is another thing to consider. I would recommend against it, given your configuration and lack of identical drives.

 

[Kyanzes]

Depends on what you wish from your RAID. If you want speed boost or data security then just as others have already said it is best to link up identical drives (you could still do that with different drives however). You could however - if your card is capable of it - easily JBOD them so you would have all your HDD capacity linked together. Also it is meaningless to do it if you don't really need such vast capacity.

 

[ICEVaPa]

Thanks for your replys, seems ill skip RAID for now... It was a longshot anyways!

Thanks again...

ICE

 

[redhatlinux]

I would stripe the drives but I would NOT put my OS on the array, so you would need three drives. Raid drives don't even need to be the same size, in a sripped array, the array would be limited to twice the size of the smaller of the two drives. If you have HDD intensive apps, the stripped array will really perform.