Raid 0 for Vista Windows Media Centre

[sluggoleo]

I have a desktop with an A8N-VM motherboard that supports raid 0 for the SATA hard drives. I currently have 2 ide hard drives, 300G and 200G as 2nd drive. I am running VISTA ultimate with 4G of RAM. Purpose of machine is to be a DVR. I only use it with my tv and am looking to see if it would make a difference, improve performance, if i was to install 2 identical SATA hard drives with RAID 0 and replace the 2 ide drives. At this point performance is ok, but looking to see if switching to RAID 0 would help.

I have read reviews on RAID 0 and they indicate that performance improvment is not usually realized for a desktop machine. Would this apply to a VISTA application with primary purpose of multi-media, playback and recording of tv?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Leo Demarce

 

[lopri]

Yes it does. Speaking from my personal experience so I can't speak for others. Normally RAID isn't worth it for desktop usage, but your case will see a tangible benifit. (PATA->SATA RAID, PVR, Vista and whatnot) However it could be tricky to setup a perfectly clean and well-performing RAID on Vista with NF4 boards. Unless you feel the performance of your current storage subsystem is sluggish, I would just save time and money. But if that's the case, then check out the following link.

http://nforcershq.com/forum/1-...postorder=asc&&start=0

Edit: Missed the part that you said "performance is ok". Well then I would advise against RAID 0. The biggest concern with RAID in Vista is, of course, drivers and compatibility. I purchased a Pioneer BDC-2202 (Blu-Ray drive) for my HTPC build, and it just doesn't get along well with RAID. It was a frustrating experience.