RAID Q's

[jw214]

i am trying to setup a RAID 1 on the 2 500gb HDD's in my sig. ive already defined the array and installed windows but im worried whether i set it up right. are you supposed to format the other drive from inside windows? bc i formatted it as a "primary". my choices were format as a primary or extended disc(in "disc management". my mobo uses "mediashield" as the raid controller. i can see both discs in "my computer". one i can access and the other shows nothing when you try to access it. they both show some used space but one has about 5gb and the other 80mb so im a bit lost. is there a way to test it? any advice before i redo the process and try it a little different?

 

[tlarkin]

i am trying to setup a RAID 1 on the 2 500gb HDD's in my sig. ive already defined the array and installed windows but im worried whether i set it up right. are you supposed to format the other drive from inside windows? bc i formatted it as a "primary". my choices were format as a primary or extended disc(in "disc management". my mobo uses "mediashield" as the raid controller. i can see both discs in "my computer". one i can access and the other shows nothing when you try to access it. they both show some used space but one has about 5gb and the other 80mb so im a bit lost. is there a way to test it? any advice before i redo the process and try it a little different?

If you set it up right it should only show one drive in windows since the second is always a cloned copy of the first. Make sure you have good anti virus and spyware software installed, because since data is written to both drives at the same time, a virus would spread to both drives immediately.

In your RAID BIOS, if it shows an array at level 1, then it is correct.

 

[tlarkin]

To answer your other question if RAID 0 is set up properly, both drives should show as 1 volume. They are striped and both act as one drive. Now, please be aware that performance increase is only really beneficial in huge amounts of data throughput. like, if you are editing say a 20 gig digital video project, you would notice loads of difference.

In regular usage like office productivity, gaming, and web surfing/email you won't notice a huge difference. You also sacrifice some stability as well.