• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Raid questions for a newb

agathodaimon

agathodaimon

Senior member
Right now I have two drives hooked up in Windows... NOT in any sort of raid configuration.

One is a Western Digital 320GB (16mb cache, SATA) drive, and the other is a Hitachi 80GB (8mb cache, SATA) drive.

Everything is on the WD drive... But really, I'm not happy with the load/save times I'm getting when gaming... It's a bit disappointing.

Would it be possible to either:
1. Add the 80GB to the 320GB drive in a raid setup or
2. Get another 320GB drive and set them up in a raid array without losing my windows installation?

Any thoughts on this?

I would need a controller card... My Gigabyte DS3L motherboard doesn't seem to come with one, unless I am just missing something.

Which controller cards should I look for? I would definitely like to keep it under $100...

Thanks
 
Not in a way that will increase performance much. You can probably create a RAID1 array non-destructively with another 320G drive but it won't be as fast as a RAID0 setup. And even with RAID0 the performance increase isn't really worth the risk since if you lose one drive you lose the entire array.
 
hmm...

So I'd have to start over in order to get any sort of performance gain?

I could always get a Raptor, but raid has always been a neat idea I've wanted to try.
I could raid two Raptors, but heheh... don't have the cash.
 
Isn't the risk of having a RAID0 fail essentially twice that of having one of the two separate drives fail? So if in the 5 years you're going to use the HDDs for example, their risk of failure is 3% for each drive, then the RAID0 setup would be 6%. Thats not too bad, considering if one HDD fails then its gonna be a PITA either way. And that can be circumvented by having some sort of backup (DVDs or an external HDD, or even a USB flash drive). With that said, a RAID0 setup doesn't give you a HUGE performance increase, but it definitely speeds things up. I think it can be worth it, depends on personal preference really.
As for RAID controller cards for under $100, there are very few and I'm not sure how reliable they are. The recommended ones cost around $250.
 
another point, aussie.... is that 2-disk RAID-0 is not a huge performance jump. You'd need a few more drives to really give you a kick in the performance.
 
Originally posted by: wired247
another point, aussie.... is that 2-disk RAID-0 is not a huge performance jump. You'd need a few more drives to really give you a kick in the performance.
Click to expand...


on a file sever though you would see a significant performance gain using a raptor though..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top