[Mugen910]

Hi all,
I'm totally new to this Sata thing. I know that setting two Seagate 160gb Sata as a Raid 0 will have a huge increase over my old IDE's. My concern is the stability and use of space.

1) I want to setup a Raid 0 with 2x 160gb sata hd's, is it safe to keep other files on there besides just application programs? 320gb of applications is not really an option.

2) If "No" to #1 then, can I partition the two 160gb into 40gb on each HD and use them in a Raid 0 for XP, leaving me with 240gb of backup space. This would be wicked cool!

I would hate to setup a Raid 0 and not utilize the space for movies and files. I understand that I can setup a Raid 1 for stability but how different is the performance from Raid 0?

Pre-Thanks for the help!

 

[crazijoe]

1) I want to setup a Raid 0 with 2x 160gb sata hd's, is it safe to keep other files on there besides just application programs? 320gb of applications is not really an option.

No

2) If "No" to #1 then, can I partition the two 160gb into 40gb on each HD and use them in a Raid 0 for XP, leaving me with 240gb of backup space. This would be wicked cool!

No, because the drives are setup as a RAID 0 at the BIOS level. I higher end controller may be able to do this, however the ones that are integrated into a MB are pretty much basic RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAID 0+1. You could implement this at a software level however this would put more demand on the processor and take away any performance gained.
If a RAID 0 is what you desire, I would get a couple of small performance drives, like WD Raptors, set them up in a RAID 0 with your OS and apps, and use your 160GB drives as data storage.

 

[Mugen910]

Thnx Crazijoe,
Lucky for me the 2nd HD was on back order so I could just cancel it and save for the Raptors. BTW, how much of a performance difference is it from Sata to Raid?


Thanks again.

 

[crazijoe]

2 drives in a RAID 0 is theoretically twice the performance of a single drive because when it writes to the drives, it will spread the data across both drives at once. The speed is just theory. Actual performance will very. There are limiting factors of the system that can affect actual performance.. Such as PCI bus speed and actual drive transfer speed. You will see more speed improvement from a RAID 0 than from a single SATA drive but don't get your hopes up as what you may expect from any benchmark program. When you see drives rated at 150MB/s, this is max transfer speed and not physical sustained data transfer speed. Normally with 2 SATA drives in a RAID 0 aarrangement you may expect about 80 or 90 MB/sec. Which is still about 30-40MB/sec more than what you would see in a single drive arrangement.
RAID controllers that are built into the southbridge of the MB chipset will offer the best performance because they are not limited to the bandwith of the PCI bus.
Some of the cautionary notes to heed by when implementing a RAID 0 array. ALWAYS BACKUP DATA. If you kept data on the array back it up often. If one drive fails you WILL lose all your data on the array. Since the time I have implemented my RAID array (which is a little over a year and a half now), I have had 3 drive failures. That is 3 different drives at 3 different times. The more drives you have in the array, the more chance of failure. I cannot stress this enough, BACKUP OFTEN.

 

[Mugen910]

Wow that is some great info. I was hoping to implement a Raid 0 for huge performance in loading applications and loading games but with the instability and the inability to fully utilize the space I guess two 160gb drives would be a waste of space. Thanks again Crazijoe.

 

[linderman]

Joe:

Very well written explanation of Raid 0 >>>> I am still learning the in's and Out's of raid >> BUT I'm still gunshy though to give it a whirl !! LOL


regards

joe