I am thinking of using two hard drives in a raid configuration but have never done this can someone explain to me how you go about doing this is it simply messing with the bios or do you have to actually plug in the hard drives differently? do you just plug both hard drives in using the sata plugs to the mobo and then go to bios and make it a raid set up? please help.
Setting up Raid
- Thread starter spartikus
- Start date
Geoff
VIP Member
Which RAID setup do you want to go with? The two basic types are RAID 0 (stripping) and RAID 1 (mirroring).
If your motherboard supports it, then you don't need to connect anything differently, just enter the RAID configuration utility after the POST. However you will need to reinstall your OS after setting up a RAID array this way.
If your motherboard supports it, then you don't need to connect anything differently, just enter the RAID configuration utility after the POST. However you will need to reinstall your OS after setting up a RAID array this way.
yeh thats pretty much it but to be honest i would not bother with raid 0 you wont notice much of a speed increase and the whole setup is less stable than not running raid at all, you are relying on the stability of two hdds to run one o/s double the risk of hdd failure. raid 1 is good for profesional people but overkill for home users i would use norton ghost instead.
Geoff
VIP Member
Thats exactly it. RAID 1 is for data security as both hard drives have the same information, so if a drive crashes your data is still secure. RAID 0 splits the data up between the drives, for faster read/write speeds.
well now i have to convince my friend who i am doing this for not to use raid 
, sounds like its probably not worth it especially if you don't have 10,000 rpm hdds. so now the other question is how do you use two hard drives not in raid config? do you just plug them into the mobo with the sata plugs and thats it when you save data just designate which hd you want to put data onto? and also when you put a fresh os on the computer will it ask which hdd you want to put it onto if so would it be good to use one hd to put the os and the other just for other data pictures etc?
, sounds like its probably not worth it especially if you don't have 10,000 rpm hdds. so now the other question is how do you use two hard drives not in raid config? do you just plug them into the mobo with the sata plugs and thats it when you save data just designate which hd you want to put data onto? and also when you put a fresh os on the computer will it ask which hdd you want to put it onto if so would it be good to use one hd to put the os and the other just for other data pictures etc?
Geoff
VIP Member
Having 10K RPM drives has nothing to do with it, you will still see faster read/write speeds, although for most people the minimal gain is not worth the added risk.
And for a normal configuration, just plug in the two drives, make sure it's not set to RAID in the BIOS, and you should be good to go.
And for a normal configuration, just plug in the two drives, make sure it's not set to RAID in the BIOS, and you should be good to go.