Setting up a RAID 5

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, I currently have 2 80GB SATA Western Digital 7200RPM Caviar SE's, about 1.5 months old now. I used them in RAID 0 up to now, just until I could afford a new hard drive (it's my birthday tomorrow 😀). I also have an 80GB PATA version of the same drive, which I have been using for backup until now. My 2 SATA drives are located on the nVidia SATA ports, but the RAID 5 controller I want to use is different (Sil 4x SATA RAID). I was thinking I should backup my data onto my PATA drive, then format my 2 SATA drives, build the RAID 5 with my 3 SATA drives, and then restore the data. Is there any way to set up the new RAID without having to reformat and restore? If not, then what would be the best way to restore all my data exactly the way it is now? Also, one concern I have is about SATA locks. I have an MSI Neo4 Plainum with a 3200+ Venice OC'd to 2.5Ghz (250x10). Would the other SATA controller automatically have SATA locks too? TIA.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Okay, no point in formatting the drives *before* you do the RAID 5 array, as it is going to have to initialize them anyway (even if it is in the background). Using the mobo controlle, I think you are going to have to reformat, and install (XP I'm guessing) with the F6 install (have drivers on floppy ready). You could do a ghost backup kind of thing, but... You best bet is to go ahead and back everything up on the PATA, and do a fresh install anyway. This will avoid a lot of errors and BSODs. Not familiar with SATA locks though, so I'll leave that to someone else. Welcome to the world of RAID. 🙂
Tas.

 

[DARQ MX]

argh. I can't believe your doing this. Those controllers are going to bottleneck you so bad you will not see a perfromece gain at all. Not to mention you are gonna be using the pci bus which is at 133mhz mind you. I would not setup RAID 5 yet considering there are no Pci-e Raid 5 controllers out yet. You will be using all of your bandwidth on your bus, I hope you know that. If you have a sound card.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Nope, I'm using my integrated sound. I'm not very picky about sound quality, so I don't think I'll ever be needing a sound card. My gigabit LAN controller and video card are both PCIe, so I'm not really using the PCI bus much right now.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: DARQ MX
argh. I can't believe your doing this. Those controllers are going to bottleneck you so bad you will not see a perfromece gain at all. Not to mention you are gonna be using the pci bus which is at 133mhz mind you. I would not setup RAID 5 yet considering there are no Pci-e Raid 5 controllers out yet. You will be using all of your bandwidth on your bus, I hope you know that. If you have a sound card.

?
pretty sure the reular 32 bit pci bus is 33MHz

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: DARQ MX
argh. I can't believe your doing this. Those controllers are going to bottleneck you so bad you will not see a perfromece gain at all. Not to mention you are gonna be using the pci bus which is at 133mhz mind you. I would not setup RAID 5 yet considering there are no Pci-e Raid 5 controllers out yet. You will be using all of your bandwidth on your bus, I hope you know that. If you have a sound card.

There are some out now. Granted, these are very high end, but they are out. And you could probably find cheaper ones as well. Also found this Promise one.
Tas.

 

[DARQ MX]

ooops my bad, I meant 133 MB/sec. but look at it this way a PCI bus is at 33mhz but with the divisor, PCI devices are running at 133Mhz/4= 33Mhz...

I should of mentioned that you can oc it...