To Raid or Not to Raid? That is the question.....

[parikh26]

I building a new comp in the next couple of weeks (to replace a outdated pain in the a** 233 mmx) and want some advice. I can't figure out whether or not to go with a raid motherboard. I want a amd 760 board w/ ddr support, so I think I'm limited to the GA7DXR, Epox 8k7a+, or MSI 6341. What are the advantages of RAID? There are three setups (from what I've read): Raid 0, 1, and 0+1. What's the difference between these?

I don't have $$ for an all out system. I'm looking to spend 1300 for athlon 1.33, crucial 2 X 256 MB pc2100 registered ram (I'd like a mobo with 4 ddr, please recommend), geforce 2 gts, and 40 gb hd, sb live value, 12x burner, dvd, etc.

Are there advantages to going with 2 X 20 gb hd's in RAID setup? I don't want to mirror, b/c from what I understand, the read time is 2x faster, but the write is the same. And since the data is duplicated, I only effectively have a 20 gb hd instead of 40.

Someone please explain the raid advantages/disadvantages etc.

 

[GremlinHater]

Well, I've heard the GA and EPOX are good, don't know about MSI, I've personally tried to find a 8K7a+ to buy so if you find it let me know, also, RAID 0 is from what I believe allows your to write twice as fast, but it's more risky as you have twice the chance of losing any unbacked up data.

If I were to do it, I'd probably have 3 drives, two of them mirrored that have my OS, user data, and stuff, and one of them standalone for user file backup, as I don't think RAID 0 is worth the bother

 

[spamboy]

Use RAID 0 for faster performance. It will show up as one big drive. It is worth it if you have the dough.