Question about RAID0 and 2 HD's

[PC Freak]

If i were to attatch 2 30gig HD's to a RAID0, will i have 60gig or still 30 gig.
My friend did this and he now has 30gig insteat of 60 gig.
Is this right or did he do something wrong?

 

[Origen]

The whole principle of RAID is multiple drives for redundancy and performance. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (not positive on the R).

Just as a general example lets say you have a 2 HDs in a RAID0 configuration. To your OS it will appear as one drive. When your OS writes to that drive the hardware will actually split the writes between the 2 physical drives.

So kinda theoretically... if one harddrive has a maximum speed of 15mb/sec it'll take you 1 second to get a 15mb file, but if you have two of the same drives that are seen as one (RAID0) then you can get that 15MB file in 0.5 seconds because half the file is on one hard drive and half on the other harddrive.

The down side is if one drive croaks you loose half your data and essentially your system just became a paperweight until you replace the drive and re-install everything.

 

[Origen]

Er.. I apologize long day at work.. RAID0 w/ 2 30GB drives should result in 60GB (the point of faster access still applies). Perhaps you have them set to RAID1 or RAID0&1 (tho this shouldn't work without 4 drives).

Also check to see if you've "added" both HDs to the RAID0 array, you may of only added one drive to the array. Kinda hard to explain since different parts do it in different ways and it's been awhile since I've played around with RAID.

 

[PC Freak]

so with RAID0 and 2 30gig dirves he should have 60gig kicking a$$.
just making sure i have this right.

 

[Viperoni]

He probbably put it into Raid 1, which mirrors that same data to both drives, so if one dies, the exact copy is on the other drive.

 

[PC Freak]

He's been checking it now. I haven't heard back from them.
I hope they get it resolved.

 

[OuranosEXX]

yes u will have 60gb!! man and more tahn 50% perfomance boost,just make sure u use the same drives

 

[grass]

viperoni -thats the way i thought it would work if you have two hard drives and one goes the other is a copy ,i bought the fast track66 ultraata/66raid card ,didn't install it yet ,working on a new computer ,but from what i under stand is it makes a copy of your second harddrive and if one goes bad just replace it and keep going- the only thing i don't understand is if i put these two harddrives on this pci what goes in my primary on the motherboard!!!!!!!

 

[Origen]

For information on what RAID does what (without the benefit of me screwing it up heh) check here:
http://www.whatis.com/WhatIs_Definition_Page/0,4152,214332,00.html

As for what goes on your primary/secondary IDE channel.. well if you want to boot off of the RAID you need to go into your BIOS and change the first (or second) boot device to something other than HDD-0. Doing this you'll not need anything on the primary/secondary IDE controller and you can disable it (usually also in BIOS) to free up the resources.

 

[grass]

origen -question can i boot off the card and still have primary and secondary on the MB working ,like i said i'm not ready to install this yet this pci card has daul connectors on it for the hardrives can i be able to install extras?????with the primary , on my secondary i have my cd-rom and cd-rw ,

 

[Origen]

You should be able to, but I'd take a hard look at the RAID controller documentation, as some have strange restrictions and try to find someone who is using the same mobo/RAID contoller setup as you and quiz them. Outside of the basics I don't know enough to give you a complete answer.