Raid
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ShibasScotch
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Raid
I have 2 WesternDigital 40gb 7200 RPM harddrives. My soyo board has on board Raid. Should i use raid 0 or leave them seprate?
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FlyingPenguin
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Depends on what you want out of it.
RAID 0 gives you faster drive access. I'm using RAID 0 myself. It won't quite double your drive access time, but it'll be a dramatic improvement.
The downside is you're now doubling the chance of fatal data corruption. If you lose either drive you'll lose all your data so now there's statistically twice the chance of a drive failure (2 drives versus 1).
However modern drives (if you purchase a good quality drive like the WD drives you have) are very reliable, and usually give you ample warning of imminent failure (drives that are failing invariably get noisier before they go - listen for dramatically louder spindle motor noise, usually a loud whine that towards the end will sound like metal grinding on metal, or loud clicks or clunks).
Only other downside is you almost certainly CAN'T use that drive array on another motherboard if you upgrade or have a mobo failure. Most onboard RAID controllers are proprietary - even if they use one of the standard chipsets. So be aware that if you upgrade that mobo, you'll almost certainly have to wipe the drives and do a clean install.
That's the reason I prefer using PCI card RAID controllers. If the mobo ever fails on you, you can transplant the array with the controller to another mobo and get it up and running again in no time.
RAID 0 gives you faster drive access. I'm using RAID 0 myself. It won't quite double your drive access time, but it'll be a dramatic improvement.
The downside is you're now doubling the chance of fatal data corruption. If you lose either drive you'll lose all your data so now there's statistically twice the chance of a drive failure (2 drives versus 1).
However modern drives (if you purchase a good quality drive like the WD drives you have) are very reliable, and usually give you ample warning of imminent failure (drives that are failing invariably get noisier before they go - listen for dramatically louder spindle motor noise, usually a loud whine that towards the end will sound like metal grinding on metal, or loud clicks or clunks).
Only other downside is you almost certainly CAN'T use that drive array on another motherboard if you upgrade or have a mobo failure. Most onboard RAID controllers are proprietary - even if they use one of the standard chipsets. So be aware that if you upgrade that mobo, you'll almost certainly have to wipe the drives and do a clean install.
That's the reason I prefer using PCI card RAID controllers. If the mobo ever fails on you, you can transplant the array with the controller to another mobo and get it up and running again in no time.
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Which soyo board are we talking about?
Depending on the onboard RAID chipset, should you go RAID, you'll have to later use a controller with a similar chipset from the same company.
The current most widely used chipsets are from Promise and Highpoint... creating RAID arrays with these will mean you can't go from Promise arrays to a controller with Highpoint on it or vice versa
Depending on the onboard RAID chipset, should you go RAID, you'll have to later use a controller with a similar chipset from the same company.
The current most widely used chipsets are from Promise and Highpoint... creating RAID arrays with these will mean you can't go from Promise arrays to a controller with Highpoint on it or vice versa
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RAID 0 gives you faster drive access.
That's wrong, RAID-0 only gives you higher data throughput aka STR (sustained transfer rate), access times remain the same.
I guess you meant almost double the data transfer speed
Most application are access time limited, not STR, so RAID-0 won't help there. It does help with applications that're STR limited, like video editing.
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FlyingPenguin
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