RAID with a SATA

[generaltso]

Right now I have two 100GB IDE drives. My motherboard has both the old IDE connections (what I am currently using) and the new SATA support.

My question is, will I be able to set up a RAID with my current two drives, and then throw a SATA drive in there? Or is it one or the other?

Also would a RAID configuration be a better performer than a new SATA drive?

 

[Bobthelost]

I don't think you can use a mixture of IDE and SATA drives for the same RAID array. However you could do a RAID with the IDE drives (assuming you've got a controller for it) and then have the SATA drive as well as a seperate volume.

RAID would be faster for boot times and for a few other occasions, but for the most part it doesn't make a difference or makes life slower, and remember if you're using old drives the chances of random death is higher than with new ones, as such make sure your backups are up to date.

A fast SATA drive like the WD4000KD would be much faster than your current 100gb drives in RAID0, and a Raptor 150 would be faster still, but it does depend on the drive, remember larger = faster for hard drives.

I'm assuming you're talking about RAID0 thorughout btw.

 

[tomt4535]

Some motherboards/chipsets allow mixing PATA with SATA. What motherboard are you using?

 

[Jiggz]

Originally posted by: tomt4535
Some motherboards/chipsets allow mixing PATA with SATA. What motherboard are you using?

I have yet to see a raid mix of PATA and SATA. I've seen mobo with RAID on either or even both PATA or SATA. Which means when you've hdd in RAID it's either both are PATA or both are SATA but not mix. I could be wrong but I have yet to see one with mix PATA/SATA.

 

[generaltso]

I have the BFG nForce4 motherboard:
http://www.bfgtech.com/nForce4_motherboard.html

I am thinking of setting up two 100GB drives in a RAID 0 config.

And then put a 300GB SATA drive on one of the SATA channels.

Thoughts?

 

[alimoalem]

i see no point but you could do it just for fun...i'd make sure everything is backed up on the 300gb though

 

[generaltso]

Why do you see no point, wouldn't RAID 0 make my system faster?

 

[Bobthelost]

No not really, i did say so earlier.

 

[tomt4535]

The Nforce4 chipsets allow cross controller RAID. From the nvidia webpage:
NVIDIA RAID

* RAID 0 disk striping support for highest system and application performance
* RAID 1 disk mirroring support for fault tolerance
* RAID 0 +1 disk striping and mirroring support for highest performance with fault tolerance
* Disk alert system provides a visual indication so users know exactly which hard drive to replace during an array failure
* Morphing allow users to change the current state of an array to another using one single step without reboot of the PC
* Cross-controller RAID uniquely supports both SATA and PATA disk devices within a single array

That BFG board should do what you want. And there is no point in adding a 300gb drive to a 2x100gb drive array. Most RAID controllers require the drives to have the same capacity, and if they dont, the whole capacity of the hard drive wont be used. In your setup, you have a 2 x100gb RAID 0 array. Adding a 300gb in the future, I believe only 100gb of that 300gb drive will be used. The preformance increase isnt great enough to lose 200gb worth of space. If I were you, go ahead and RAID those 2 100gb drives, then in the future get a larger hard drive for backup and storage, and leave it as a single disk.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: generaltso
Why do you see no point, wouldn't RAID 0 make my system faster?

No, not really so's you'd notice. It would make you more vulnerable to a HDD failure in that array. One drive goes bad, you lose everything. At least RAID 1 provides some insurance.