RAID Or Without RAID ?

[Revolution]

I have a 250GB SATA HDD.
Now I just bought a new 500GB SATA HDD.
I got Gigaby G31 motherboard.

Now when I try to partition my new 500GB HDD in Windows mode using disk management I asked to enter the RAID number(0,1 etc).
I didn't know my board support any RAID.
I don't want RAID cos I heard that I will unable to use total space(250+500=750) if I use RAID.
And if RAID fail u have to loose DATA ?
Are those true ?
So,please tell me other way to partition and connect both HDDs so that I can use total space of my both HDDS.....

 

[Seero]

I have a 250GB SATA HDD.
Now I just bought a new 500GB SATA HDD.
I got Gigaby G31 motherboard.

Now when I try to partition my new 500GB HDD in Windows mode using disk management I asked to enter the RAID number(0,1 etc).
I didn't know my board support any RAID.
I don't want RAID cos I heard that I will unable to use total space(250+500=750) if I use RAID.
And if RAID fail u have to loose DATA ?
Are those true ?
So,please tell me other way to partition and connect both HDDs so that I can use total space of my both HDDS.....

Don't do it, the size of a raid will be the Min(size)xnumber of drives. In your case, it will be 500Gb in total, meaning 250Gb wasted.

Unless you have 2 or more identical drives, raiding it will be meaningless. Even then, the performance don't scale up good with HDD. With 2 drives, you only have raid 0 and raid 1. Raid 0 means 1 drives dies = byebye data. Raid 1 means slower than 1 drive with size of 1 drive.

 

[Revolution]

Thanks!
I got my first answer that is no RAID.
But,how do I partition my new 500Gb HDD ?
And how do I connect them ?
Do I have to use old school "fdisk" method or some thing other ?
In window more I am asked to enter the RAID number.....

 

[Seero]

Thanks!
I got my first answer that is no RAID.
But,how do I partition my new 500Gb HDD ?
And how do I connect them ?
Do I have to use old school "fdisk" method or some thing other ?
In window more I am asked to enter the RAID number.....

You can partition your drive with the installation of window disk, that is the best method if you are starting fresh.

Partition is just a way to divide spaces on the drive. Let say you have a single drive with a single partition, then you will see c:\ as the only drive. If you have 3 partition on a single drive, then you will have c:\ d:\ e:\ drives, as if you have 3 independent drives. You don't need to connect them as the drive is already connected.

 

[jtisgeek]

You just want to create a new simple volume then it will ask how big you want it default will be the whole drive.

The raid options you see are software raid from the os doesn't have anything to do with your hardware. Software raids are bad cause if windows crashes you lose the raid.

 

[lopri]

Don't do software RAID. (Both the motherboard chipset-based and Windows-based) It's not worth the hassle and risk. Windows-based RAID is just as flaky as chipset-based RAID. Use the new 500 GB disk as a data disk and save documents, music, photos, videos, etc and get an external backup drive.

If you don't have that much data, simply use the new 500GB disk as a backup disk. If you must partition or want to learn how to:

1. Right click on My Computer. (or go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools)
2. Go to "Disk Management". It will show all physical volumes attached to the computer, including USB drives and optical drives.
3. Select the disk you want to configure. (simply highlight it)
4. Right-click on it. It will show available options for that volume.

 

[FishAk]

The raid options you see are software raid from the os doesn't have anything to do with your hardware. Software raids are bad cause if windows crashes you lose the raid.

Don't do software RAID. (Both the motherboard chipset-based and Windows-based) It's not worth the hassle and risk. Windows-based RAID is just as flaky as chipset-based RAID. Use the new 500 GB disk as a data disk and save documents, music, photos, videos, etc and get an external backup drive.

I'm using four disks in soft RAID (ICH10R) in RAID 10 (or 01- not sure which) with W7. Are you saying that if Windows crashes I'll loose the array? That doesn't fit my experience. I've had to shut down with the big blue button several times due to power failure, and also because windows sits on the “Shutting Down” screen for half an hour or more occasionally. I've also had several BSODs while attempting an unstable OC. After a crash, the controller has to verify the array for several hours, once I'm in windows. but the system always boots up.


When I boot Puppy Linux from a CD, two of the disks show up blank (or corrupt- I don't remember which), but I can read the data from from the other two. Am I wrong in assuming that, should I loose the array, as long as one of the two mirrored disks is functional, I can salvage my current data?


I made the mistake of buying WD disks with TLER enabled, so I have to recover from a disk getting booted off the array once every three weeks or so. Other than that, I haven't found this soft RAID to be flaky, or inconvenient. It's definitely much faster than the single disk I have of the same model. Obviously, I'd be more pleased if I wasn't using Western Digital in the array...

 

[jtisgeek]

No there's a difference between creating the raid in windows and using your ICH10r . Windows is completely software you take your extra drivers after you have already installed windows and it will let you raid them.

Your raid was setup in the ich10r bios which is the controller from the board. This hardware on the south bridge the allows the raid logic with the rest being done in the driver which is software. By raid standards this is a software raid also because 95 percent of the work is done in the driver. All current non sever level boards offer this type of raid . Intel does this to save on money if they added a real hardware controller the cost of the chip set would go up 10 fold.

Now for the the sake of speed and data protection anybody building a nice workstation or some type of sever always goes with a raid card sas/sata that has a physical CPU on board to handle raid chores and has ram to handle write cache.

Your other question on the linux stuff it does see your data cause it doesn't have a driver to be able to read your controller so it just seees to blank raw data drives even thought there not. Hopefully this all makes since I tried to sum up a lot of info in this post.

And yes any raid is better than a single drive.

 

[Revolution]

Thanks all for ur replies!
Yea,u ppl right that is software RAID.
I have checked my motherboard doesn't support hardware RAID.
So,I have to just ignore the RAId page when I will be partition using windows "Disk Management".....