Rebuilding Machine - HDD Set Up Question

[olds]

I am "rebuilding" my machine after a crash and PSU failure and was just given 2, 36 GB Raptors to go with the 2 I already had. I also have a WD 120 GB IDE drive.

How should I set up these drives for speed and data integrity? I would assume RAID 0+1.
Can the ASUS P4PE support 0+1?
If so, I assume I won't be able to use the 120 GB HDD too?
I haven't set up RAID in years, do I still need to set the stripe size? If so, what size?
Or is RAID overkill?

I mostly browse the internet, do some Word/Excel/PowerPoint and game.
This machine has to last me another year till I build a Vista/DX10 machine.
TIA

Specs:
P IV 2.53

ASUS P4PE:
2 channel UltraDMA/100/66/33 Bus Master IDE (with support for up to 4 ATAPI-devices)
Additional IDE Raid controller (Promise PDC20376, 1 channel IDE, supporting ATA33/66/100/133 & RAID 0, 1 with support for up to 2 ATAPI-devices)
Support for SerialATA (2 channels)
Support for LS-120 / ZIP / ATAPI CD-ROM

1 GB PC2700

 

[ScrapSilicon]

hmm...4 different p4pes ...hiya 'boat 🙂

 

[olds]

Hey Scrappy. It's the plain jane P4PE but the ASUS link is dead

 

[John]

While the P4Pe supports Raid 0 & 1 I don't believe it will do 0+1. 🙁 However you can pick up a $20 Rosewill SATA Raid card though.

So what should you use for a stripe size? The best way to find out is to try different values: empirical evidence is the best for this particular problem. Also, as with most "performance optimizing endeavors", don't overestimate the difference in performance between different stripe sizes; it can be significant, particularly if contrasting values from opposite ends of the spectrum like 4 kiB and 256 kiB, but the difference often isn't all that large between similar values. And if you must have a rule of thumb, I'd say this: transactional environments where you have large numbers of small reads and writes are probably better off with larger stripe sizes (but only to a point); applications where smaller numbers of larger files need to be read quickly will likely prefer smaller stripes. Obviously, if you need to balance these requirements, choose something in the middle.

For your usage a 32-64kb stripe would be fine IMHO. You can do periodic data backups to the IDE 120GB. 🙂

 

[Fraggable]

If it was me, I'd buy a PCI controller that could do RAID 0 X 4 and set up my 120GB drive on the mobo SATA ports for backups. Sure there's a greater risk of losing your data if one of four drives fail, but just keep stuff backed up and you'll be fine.

I wish someone would give me a couple Raptors...