RAID Mode? What is it?

[scottvsaunders]

Hi,

I have just installed a new SATA card into my PC and it has a RAID controller also. I am not sure if I should be looking at RAID as an option for me, I currently have 4 hard drives on my PC so I dont know if SATA will benefit me or not?

Can someone explain the set up and how benefits it would give please?
Thanks

Scott

 

[tlarkin]

RAID is a technology that stripes and/or mirrors drives. It really is not worth it for you to RAID anything unless you need tons of data throughput. I would run your SATA controller in IDE mode instead. Easier and more stable than RAID 0, and if you do run RAID 1 it slows down performance a bit since multiple HDs have to read/write at the exact same time.

IMO, it is more for the niche professional or a server side technology.

 

[karma]

HI,
Unless your drives have SATA interfaces, the SATA card will not help you. You will be stuck with parallel ATA. Most newer mother boards have very limited ATA capability. You may be forced to buy new SATA drives.

I'm running my new home brew Vista 32 bit machine in RAID 1 which is the mirror option. I have two 500mB SATA drives. With RAID 1 the size of the effective RAID 1 drive equals the size of the smallest drive in the array. In my case that equals 500mB.

I use RAID1 as insurance against drive failure. If one drive fails the other takes over until the bad one is replaced. It is highly unlikely that both drives will fail at exactly the same time. I hate drive crashes and that is why I chose RAID 1.

I have not noticed a speed penalty using RAID 1.

Sparky