Raid?

Gigabyte426

Gigabyte426

New Member
I know there are three functions of RAID to make two hard drives act as one. I've got a 60 gb drive almost full and i just got a new 80 gb. They are both IDE and I'm wondering what application of RAID is best because I want them both to run as one system and split the disk writing if possible. Also, i don't know the first thing about starting up RAID and if i should format or back-up stuff first.
 
k, it looks like striping is the way to go, but i would also like to transfer some GB's of info to my new drive right away so that I can use the striping and not fill up my 60 gig right away. I hope this doesn't require wiping.....
 
Gigabyte426 said:
k, it looks like striping is the way to go, but i would also like to transfer some GB's of info to my new drive right away so that I can use the striping and not fill up my 60 gig right away. I hope this doesn't require wiping.....
Click to expand...

For RAID 0
1. You need a motherboard that have a RAID controler
2. If you dont have a motherboard with a RAID controler you will need to buy a raid controler.
3. If you use a 60 and 80 gb hardrive you will loose 20 gb of space. It will act as one 120gb harddrive. To find out how much space the RAID 0 have you times the lowest space harddrive by number of hardrives.
4. When you setup Raid 0 it will wipe out all the data on both harddrives.
 
kof2000 said:
so you dont need two identical drives?
Click to expand...

Correct they do not need to be identical. It should work fine with any 2 drives. You just loose space if one bigger then the other. Like I said the space you get is size of smallest harddrive multiply by number of harddrives.
 
Correct they do not need to be identical. It should work fine with any 2 drives. You just loose space if one bigger then the other. Like I said the space you get is size of smallest harddrive multiply by number of harddrives.
Click to expand...
I think you can use software raid controller, in which case you can partition away the excess space that one drive has over the other. So if you have a 80gb and a 60gb, then you partition 20gb of the 80gb drive to a new partition and set up the raid with the remaining 60gb and the other 60gb drive. Thus giving 120gb in the array, and 20gb seperate non raided partition.

But then software raids aren't as good as hardware raids


k, it looks like striping is the way to go, but i would also like to transfer some GB's of info to my new drive right away so that I can use the striping and not fill up my 60 gig right away. I hope this doesn't require wiping.....
Click to expand...
it will wipe both drives
 
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