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Hi,
I'm new to RAID, i've never set up any sort of RAID configuration so i've got no idea how to set up one...
I've bought 2 Western Digital 250GB Sata HDDs and i'd like to put them in RAID 0...
My motherboard is a Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe, it has 6 SATA ports in total, 4 black ports named "SATA1,SATA2,SATA3,SATA4" and 2 red ones named "SATA_RAID"...
So i was thinking i should first put them in the SATA_RAID ports, but the strange thing is that the 2nd SATA_RAID port is located on the back of the motherboard, on the outside of the case...
Now this isnt really a problem cause i can just put a cable trough the case but i'm just not sure if this are the right ports..So when i've got my HDDs hooked up, what do i need to do in BIOS to make an array of RAID HDDs and to let windows detect a single 500GB disk..?
And when i've set up an array of HDDs i'd like to install Windows Vista Ultimate 32Bit on it.. do i need a floppy for some 3rd-party RAID drivers or does it provide its own?
I'm sorry i sound like a noob but i've just never set up a RAID configuration so if someone could make a step-by-step instruction for my board, that would be awesome;)
Thanks in advance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_a...
http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorial...
RAID0 is not recommended, the motherboard manual should give insight into RAID as well....
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I second WebsWonder.
Any hardware RAID is setup PRIOR to installing any OS. RAID0 is something that has very limited prcatical use. You ARE a noob and therefore I will assume you don't have an idea what those limited uses might be. If you proceed with RAID0 you will eventually be back here asking how to recover your valuable data.
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RAID arrays are generally setup to protect data, RAID-0 has no protection. The data is split across both drives - if one drive fails, all data is lost & there's no way to recover it.
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I'm aware that the chance of me losing my files due to HDD failing will be doubled when using RAID 0, But that's why i'll be backing up the important bits, or maybe i'll create an RAID0+1 array...
Anyway, i just need the speed and i'm new to RAID so i'll be fooling around a bit before i'm really gonna do some serious things on the drives...Anyway, thanks for the quick response;)
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"i just need the speed and i'm new to RAID"
Then I suggest you read up on RAID & the different arrays. As I said, RAID is basically for reliability & data security. It is generally used in servers where reliability & data protection are a priority. RAID-0 really goes against what RAID is all about.
Be aware that RAID-0+1 arrays require a minimum of 4 HDDs.
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Just one more question.. what striping/chunk size do i want? i can choose from 16KB,32KB,64KB,128KB... i'm planning to install my OS in this array and will primarily use it for gaming.. so what size is best for that? thanks:)
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If you are going to use it for gaming you will see no noticable improvement in speed - in fact some gaming benchmarks have found a decrease in performance when using RAID0.
Why? First of all most performance within games has nothing to do with the hard-drive. Where the hard-drive does come into play is with loading levels. But, developers have made hard-drive performance much less important because the files needed to load a level are typically compressed. So, the system can typically read the data faster than the CPU can uncompress it.
http://www.overclockers.com/article...
Michael J
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Ok i installed them in RAID 0 and set a striping size of 64kb, installed Crysis on it while still running windows from my old HDD.. I started up the game and man, what a difference! the loading times are much shorter and the amount of ingame stutters have been cut in half! then after defrag it was even faster:)
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I'm not doubting your results. But, what would the results be if you set up a brand new single drive witht he same specs?
Michael J
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