Need RAID help

B

Boondock_Saint

Geek Trainee
I am building a new system and have never messed with RAID before. I have 2 36gig Western Digital Raptor SATA drives, and 1 250 gig Western Digital IDE drive. Oh, and I have a Chaintech Zenith 9cjs motherboard. The motherboard has two SATA headers and two IDE plug ins.
I want to use the 250gig drive for storage and everyday work. The Raptors however will be used strictly for gaming. My question is how should I go about setting things up to get what I want out of it? Do I install the 250 and load the OS onto it, and then put in the Raptors? HELP lol

NOOB
 
Well, you have RAID 0 available to you. Basically, this works by using the smallest hard drive size times the number of hard drives. Basically, you'll have one big 72GB hard drive here. The big deal is the speed increase, as both drives are accessed at the same time. However, if either drive fails, the data on both will be lost. Also, you'll need to have a floppy disk with the drivers on it to install under Win2k or XP if you want to put the OS on the RAID array. If you want speed and keep backing up, you'll be fine.

If you go for the RAID 0 array, you'll want to have a floppy disk made with the drivers provided, if Chaintech didn't already provide them.
Assuming a Win2k or XP install, you'll boot off the CD, and when you see the blue screen (the text-only part, not a BSOD---that's bad) hit F6 (if I remember correctly) and it will ask you for a floppy disk with hard drive controller drivers on it. It won't bring up the thing immediately, but it will do it before you get to formatting the hard drive. After this, go do the install as normal.

If you don't use the RAID 0 array for the OS install, you can ignore the above paragraph. Just make sure to install your chipset drivers or you won't see the SATA drives.
 
Yeah I definately want to do RAID 0. I guess what is lost on me is why would I want to burden the RAID with the OS and page files and all that mess when I can install it on the 250gig. Again, I am very new to this, so some things you may think go without saying I have no idea about. lol I appreciate your patience
 
Boondock_Saint said:
Yeah I definately want to do RAID 0. I guess what is lost on me is why would I want to burden the RAID with the OS and page files and all that mess when I can install it on the 250gig. Again, I am very new to this, so some things you may think go without saying I have no idea about. lol I appreciate your patience
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because it should be faster, you can use the 250GB to store personal files, like game saves, work documents etc etc And have all the programs files on the RAID setup!
 
My only concern with keeping more than just games on the RAID would be if one of the drives fails. I'm not too concerned with just losing games. Losing the OS, and various other programs on the other hand would suck. lol
 
If you keep your data backed up, you should be fine. But, if you're concerned about reliablity at all, RAID 0 isn't for you. RAID stand for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, however, RAID 0 has no redundancy like level's 1-7 do.

Personally, I won't do RAID 0. If you have the cash to invest in a RAID array, RAID 5 would be about the best way to go. It's got the speed of RAID 0, but has redundancy. However, you'll have to purchase an add-in card to get RAID 5, as I don't recall that Chaintech board having any chip, optional or not, that has RAID 5 capabilities.
 
you could simple do a regular backup onto the 250GB HD! and if something was to go wrong, you can restore the files from the backup, keeping all the programs etc
 
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