Some questions about RAID

T

The Funambulist

New Member
Im new to the RAID thing.
I want to set up a 2 hard drive RAID system on my computer to speed things up a bit.
I have 1 80GB SATA hard drive, and 1 60GB and 1 40GB IDE hard drives.
Can I use RAID with one SATA and one IDE hard drive?
Do they have to be the same size?
How do I set it up?
I have a dell Dimension 9100.
It has a RAID controller on it.
 
ok, no you cant cross the two platforms, however you can buy a ide to sata chip for 10$ at a computer store. then yes you can raid them if the raid controler is for the sata drives. If it allows you, you can do a raid 5 which will speed things up hoever you will only get 120 GB total.
 
The Funambulist said:
Im new to the RAID thing.
I want to set up a 2 hard drive RAID system on my computer to speed things up a bit.
I have 1 80GB SATA hard drive, and 1 60GB and 1 40GB IDE hard drives.
Can I use RAID with one SATA and one IDE hard drive?
Do they have to be the same size?
How do I set it up?
I have a dell Dimension 9100.
It has a RAID controller on it.
Click to expand...

Completely pointless for regular productivity and gaming, unless you are doing massive data throughput on your drives RAID 0 offers no real performance boost and it lowers the stability of your machine.
 
Why do you want to run RAID? What exactly do you think you'll accomplish running it?

Do you just use your computer for internet surfing, office productivity, and gaming? If so, just buy a high speed HD, it will perform better and be more stable.
 
tlarkin said:
Why do you want to run RAID? What exactly do you think you'll accomplish running it?

Do you just use your computer for internet surfing, office productivity, and gaming? If so, just buy a high speed HD, it will perform better and be more stable.
Click to expand...

I do a lot of high end gaming, processing large photos, and I am severely lacking space right now.
 
The Funambulist said:
I do a lot of high end gaming, processing large photos, and I am severely lacking space right now.
Click to expand...

A RAID will do nothing for you. Unless your photos are in RAW and taking up several hundred gigs per a photo a RAID won't really increase your performance. Photo rendering is mainly Processor + RAM dependent.

Go buy a high end hard drive that has a butt load of cache. The more things the system can read from cache the faster it is, and the less your HD is used, which means it will last longer.

RAID 0 does absolutely nothing for gaming, besides perhaps maybe load a bit faster, but even then it is marginal at best. It will not increase your FPS at all.

Go buy a high end HD with like 32 megs of cache or something like that, you'll be happier and it will be more stable.
 
The Funambulist said:
I'm broke and I would like to get the best out of what I have.
Click to expand...

What you have is useless for RAID, they must be the same exact drives or you will run into bottle neck issues to begin with.

Save your money and buy a high end HD. With your current drives you can't even set up a RAID. I guess you could set up what is called dynamic disks but you would sacrifice performance for something that doesn't offer you any sort of benefit.

For you to set up a RAID it is highly recommended you use the same size, type, speed and brand of drive when setting one up. If there is any performance differences amongst drives you will create a bottle neck.
 
well kinda/i think (have not messed around tooo much but)

i think the bottleneck will only be that of the slowest drive. which is not much of a bottle neck unless it is really old. if you want to raid the two drives however you can get at most 80GB because it can only be as big as the smallest drive. on that note, i would say it is better to leave it as two drives and just use the secount one. if you want to try it, there is no harm done, unless you have your os on one of them, but its really up to you
 
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