Raid arrays? Easiest way to set them up?

[Waffle]

Alright - gone and done it and started my winter computer project, which includes new video card, new ram (had old slow stuff in) and going to a raid array.

I've got a nice stash of hardrives here:

4 - 80gb SATA western digital WD800
1 - 80gb IDE Western Digital WD800
2 - 40GBMaxtor IDE drives

I've got a 500watt power supply - so not too worried about that.

What I'm trying to figue out is how the heck to array these. Honestly, I'm just looking at using the WD800s.

I was looking into the manuals and how to set-up the arrays from my mobo manufacturer (gigabyte k8ns pro) There's 4 sata connection off the mobo, using  a "gigaraid" driver as well as the Sil32r? - anyhoo..


What would be the easist way to do this? any recomendations?
I've pretty much settled on doing a striped array... just kinda at a loss on where to start. All my important data is on my backup firewire drive.. and getting ready to do the clean sweep....lmao.

Get in the game - trial by fire!

[38ruk]

http://members.shaw.ca/xtremecomputing/RAID.htm    this might help   38


another good one   http://www.duxcw.com/digest/Howto/mb/abit/kx7-333/raid-cont.htm

[Waffle]

oy - more confusion now,


I read there that they said I should leave the boot drive alone and stripe data disk -and  left a question about the paging file - does that reside on the boot drive?


So with that that leaves me

Drive c: IDE 80 GB wd800 with XP on it - C drive -  unless I partition it

Drives D and E would be the SATA 80 GB drives in a Raid 0 (2x80gb HDDs per drive)

Would that be a wise set up? Machine is primarily used for A/V stuff and gaming now..lol

[Kev367th]

Pagefile will be on your c: drive.
You can move it to the stripe set once created.
Its accessable from -
Right click 'My computer', select 'Properties'
Choose 'Advanced' tab.
Pick 'Performance Options' button.
Choose 'Change' under the Virtual Drive heading

Pick drive ( D: or E: ), set Initial/Max sizes to the same (approx 1.5x your memory)
Click 'Set'

Reboot.

Remember - RAID 0 = you lose 1 drive in array, you lose everything on the array, no redundancy.

If you need redundancy use 2 RAID 0 arrays (2x 2x80GB SATA) and mirror the arrays (RAID 1) that way you have RAID 0+1. You can lose any 2 drives and still have intact data. Drawback is your available storage will only be 160Gb.
Writes are slower than RAID 0 alone, but reads are good as it can read from 4 drives.

[Waffle]

well "got 'er done" least for now.

I'm going to go ahead and keep Xp on the single IDE 80GB drive - use that for OS and any microsoft office crap, ect...

Then I'll have 2 80gb drives for data and games, and work programs.

I just finished up one drive which has a bunch of picture and audio  data on it. Holy *** - is it fast now - pulled up something like 50 thunbnails like it was nothing...wow!

Waiting on some sata cables till I can set the other 2 drives up....