how does RAID work??

Hey i might be getting a new 1tb hard drive, and i want to know how to RAID it with my 300gb velociraptor... what is RAID, how does it work, and how do you set it up? thanks!

IIRC to use raid you have to have two or more of the same drives. There are many types of raid but Raid 0, IIRC, runs basically stripes of data on each HDD. So instead of loading a program up with one long stream from one hard drive it loads a small portion from one and a small portion from another. Allowing much faster loading.

Forgot to add:

What I would suggest, and am doing is, install the OS and games on the Raptor. Install all other programs that give you the option of where to put them on the 1TB HDD. That way the Raptor doesn't run out of room.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

entropyecho

I don't recommend RAID at all. It is a must for business IT databases, but not for home use. RAID has the following characteristics, Faster Read/Write, Higher Storage, Prevent data lose when drive went dead. Depends on how you set it up, you get different amount of benefits from those characteristics. And you will spend different amount of money on it as well. If you want to backup your computer, use Vista Business Build-in Partition Backup or spend 70bucks on 3rd Party software for it.magicalclick

[QUOTE="magicalclick"]I don't recommend RAID at all. It is a must for business IT databases, but not for home use. RAID has the following characteristics, Faster Read/Write, Higher Storage, Prevent data lose when drive went dead. Depends on how you set it up, you get different amount of benefits from those characteristics. And you will spend different amount of money on it as well. If you want to backup your computer, use Vista Business Build-in Partition Backup or spend 70bucks on 3rd Party software for it.JigglyWiggly_

[QUOTE="entropyecho"]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

JigglyWiggly_

RAID 0 is for performance gains, the others are for reliability.

RAID arrays SHOULD consisit of hard drives that are the same in size, although slight differences can be tolerated.

There are only two types of RAID you can use with two drives, RAID 0 and RAID 1. In every RAID scenario if the drives are of two different sizes the size of each volume is treated as the size of the smaller drive.

Scenario 1, RAID 1: Mirroring. Two drives are treated as one, each drive contains a copy of the same data in case one fails. In your case, your 1.3tb of total drive space will be treated as 300gb on the smaller drive with a mirrored set of that data on the 1TB wasting 700GB of space. Total space for your use, 300gb. Same as if you threw away your 1tb drive.

Scenario 0, RAID 0: Striping. Two drives are treated as one, with half even bits written to one and odd bits written to the other. This improves the performance of every read/write operation since you utilize the combined speed of both drives instead of one. In this scenario you get 600gb of usable space (again, out of your 1.3tb) but if either drive fails you lose all of your data.

So if you wanna go RAID you will get either 300gb or 600gb of usable space out of your 1.3tb of total drive space.

-Byshop

Hey i might be getting a new 1tb hard drive, and i want to know how to RAID it with my 300gb velociraptor... what is RAID, how does it work, and how do you set it up? thanks!

X1Viper

imo it is just complete waste of time and money for home use. Just buy a 1TB drive cheap for media and games. Your OS drive shouldn't be too big and just backup your partition (c drive) to your new 1TB drive. RAID is mainly for server that can't have down time. I am sure you are willing to spend 30 minutes recover your PC from your new 1TB drive.magicalclick

Home use can mean a lot of things. RAID 0 in a gaming machine can really cut down on load times and it isn't particiularly expensive, just make sure your data is not stored on the RAID volume or better yet is backed up elsewhere.

I personally run a RAID 5 (1.5 tb usable storage) and a RAID 10 (2 tb usable storage) in my house, one as a backup media server and the other as a primary. Both volumes also host Hyper-V VMs that I use for work. I built these out after losing a 750gb drive with a good chunk of media and image files.

-Byshop