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Speaking of Raid 0 .....

MidasKnight

MidasKnight

Diamond Member
Who here is setup with Raid 0 ? is your system overclocked as well ? How are the newer SATA 7200 / 8mb cach HD's doing in Raid 0 configs in general ?

Thanks.

Just like some feedback as I'm getting ready to setup today with ( 2 ) Maxtor 80GB HDD's SATA Raid.
 
I'm doing a RAID 0 array with two Seagate 120GBers...

I have a question to add -- do I have to set up RAID before I set up Windows, or how does that work? I haven't gotten all the parts in yet (Monday) so I just want to know what steps to take before I go setting it all up 🙂

Thanks!
 
Originally posted by: Scribe
I'm doing a RAID 0 array with two Seagate 120GBers...

I have a question to add -- do I have to set up RAID before I set up Windows, or how does that work? I haven't gotten all the parts in yet (Monday) so I just want to know what steps to take before I go setting it all up 🙂

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Creating a RAID array comes first & then the Windows setup/install process.
 
Originally posted by: Algere
Originally posted by: Scribe
I'm doing a RAID 0 array with two Seagate 120GBers...

I have a question to add -- do I have to set up RAID before I set up Windows, or how does that work? I haven't gotten all the parts in yet (Monday) so I just want to know what steps to take before I go setting it all up 🙂

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Creating a RAID array comes first & then the Windows setup/install process.
Click to expand...

I bought the Chaintech mobo (reviewed here recently) with onboard RAID... is there usually a disk I have to run thru, or set up in the BIOS, or how's that work?

Thanks!
 
Oh... and when I create the array... will I be able to partition it at all? Or will I have two drives, or one big drive (2x120 = 1x240gb partition?)? I like to have a few separate drives for convienience is all, so that would be nice to have 🙂

Appreciate any help!
 
Originally posted by: Scribe
I bought the Chaintech mobo (reviewed here recently) with onboard RAID... is there usually a disk I have to run thru, or set up in the BIOS, or how's that work?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I don't know much about that board in question but there's 2 options, either Windows supports it natively or it doesn't. If it supports it there's no driver to install from a external source i.e. floppy disk. On the other hand if Windows doesn't natively support it(detect) generally you'll have to copy RAID drivers onto a floppy diskette e.g. Windows XP during the beginning of the Windows setup process(blue screen) there will be a message on the lower section of the screen to press "F6" to install SCSI/RAID drivers. Windows will then use the drivers from the floppy disk.
 
Originally posted by: Scribe
I'm doing a RAID 0 array with two Seagate 120GBers...

I have a question to add -- do I have to set up RAID before I set up Windows, or how does that work? I haven't gotten all the parts in yet (Monday) so I just want to know what steps to take before I go setting it all up 🙂

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You're going to have to re-install Windows because when you setup the RAID 0 in the controller it will NOT replicate your original drive across both. If you were doing RAID 1, then it should work, but RAID 0 requires a fresh install with all hardware present.


Oh... and when I create the array... will I be able to partition it at all? Or will I have two drives, or one big drive (2x120 = 1x240gb partition?)?
Click to expand...

I kept mine as one big 160g partition (2 x 80gb drives). You should be able to partition it to smaller partitions when you are going through the Windows install. Windows should see it as one big drive.
 
Originally posted by: Scribe
Oh... and when I create the array... will I be able to partition it at all? Or will I have two drives, or one big drive (2x120 = 1x240gb partition?)? I like to have a few separate drives for convienience is all, so that would be nice to have 🙂

Appreciate any help!
Click to expand...

You'll be able to partition(single/multiple) the drives moments after the "F6" message(blue screen still) and in RAID 0(striping) e.g. 2 drives will be shown as 1 big combined drive or in RAID 1(mirror) it'll be seen as 1 single drive.
 
Yes, but to set up the array... is there something in the BIOS for that, or is that created with the Windows installer? Or do I have to boot off a disk to get that to be set up?

Thanks!
 
In response to the OP:

Who here is setup with Raid 0 ? is your system overclocked as well ? How are the newer SATA 7200 / 8mb cach HD's doing in Raid 0 configs in general ?
Click to expand...

I have 2 x Seagate 7200.7 80gb ATA100 2mb cache drives setup in RAID 0 on a Promise PCI raid controller. My rig is a XP Mobile 2500+ OC'd to 2.4ghz. It works great. 🙂

As for SATA performance, from what I've read most SATA drives are based off of the same PATA drives, and don't offer much of a performance boost. As for whether or not they will perform better in RAID 0 than my drives for example, they might, probably mostly since they are 8mb cache drives though, not due to SATA.
 
Originally posted by: Scribe
Yes, but to set up the array... is there something in the BIOS for that, or is that created with the Windows installer? Or do I have to boot off a disk to get that to be set up?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The array must be enabled in the BIOS and then during POST you may have to press a key i.e. [tab] to enter your MB's RAID setup/configure menu.
 
Originally posted by: Scribe
Yes, but to set up the array... is there something in the BIOS for that, or is that created with the Windows installer? Or do I have to boot off a disk to get that to be set up?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The array is setup in the raid controller bios. If it is built into your mobo, it may be in the mobo bios. On my rig, i have a pci raid controller, and during bootup I get a special menu for the raid controller with the option to press "CTRL A" I think to open the config. This is very similar to a scsi card config.
 
you have to start in the bios there is a raid configuration utility included with your sata chipset. siig is ctrl plus s or f4 I don?t know what promise uses but its the same general idea.
once you get into the utility it will list the individual hdds and options.here you can build the raid set, if you already have a raid set built then it allows you to fix some problems or break/rebuild the set. there is also a low level format option that is handy for restoring a buggy drive. for speed choose raid 0 for redundancy and data protection choose raid 1. what raid 0 does is basically takes 2 physical drives and stripes them together to create one virtual drive twice as big as the smallest drive in the set. since all data is then simultaneously read or written to two drives at the same time you get twice the speed. for most xp systems running sata with raptors that means about 120 m/sec but I have looked at the io graph on several sata systems and it is not clean very spiky compared to ide. you can confirm this with a little tool called hdspeed "try this and let me know please" so what you have with a raid 0 is one bigger virtual drive and that?s what the bios and windows sees you can do with this drive whatever a single drive will do. just twice as fast word of warning though it would be better to get a hdd tray and have several storage disks than to repartition an existing drive and if you use sata they will be hot swapable too
 
Are the hard drive failures in Raid 0 configs still in the higher range ( IDE or SATA ) as they were a couple years ago ? Or are manufactures making drives of better quality and thus HDD's are fairing better in Raid 0 setups ?
 
Originally posted by: MidasKnight
Are the hard drive failures in Raid 0 configs still in the higher range ( IDE or SATA ) as they were a couple years ago ? Or are manufactures making drives of better quality and thus HDD's are fairing better in Raid 0 setups ?
Click to expand...

I have been running RAID 0 for the last 3-4 years and have has on problem. I am even using my orignal 2 drives.
 
Originally posted by: MidasKnight
Are the hard drive failures in Raid 0 configs still in the higher range ( IDE or SATA ) as they were a couple years ago ? Or are manufactures making drives of better quality and thus HDD's are fairing better in Raid 0 setups ?
Click to expand...

There's nothing inherent in RAID0 that would make the drives themselves more likely to fail... your question makes little sense.
 
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