What is a RAID?

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johnman05

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#1 johnman05
Member since 2005 • 1029 Posts
Im building my first computer and i jus want to have a better understanding of this RAID configuration thing. doesn it have to do w/ HDD configurations? 
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HalfLifer248

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#2 HalfLifer248
Member since 2005 • 913 Posts
Yes it does have to with HDD. Well lets say you have 2 Western Digital Raptors 150Gb 10,000rpm drives In RAID 0. Well If your loading a level in Battlefield 2 Instead of one HDD reading it off on needle They work in tandem to load the level twice as fast.
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chris3131

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#3 chris3131
Member since 2003 • 329 Posts
raid 0 is very fast for loading things off your hard drive and the other raids (raid 1) are for security reasons and used mostly in servers and such
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imsohighdef

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#4 imsohighdef
Member since 2005 • 646 Posts
Raid is a:

redundant array of independant disks

Using multiple hard drives for sharing or replicating data.
Common raid setups are RAID-0 and RAID-1
RAID-0 is data striping or using both together, RAID-1 is data mirroring or copying in case of crash!


 
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BeavermanA

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#5 BeavermanA
Member since 2003 • 2652 Posts
Well if you want speed, you'll put your RAID in RAID 0 configuration mode. This effectively doubles your hdd's speed, if you're using two drives, as it combines the drives and data reads/writes to them simultaneously. This is what you'll want to use if you're gaming. It also carries a higher risk for data loss though, if one hdd dies you lose all your data, as the data is shared partially among all the drives in your raid. This has happened to me.
If you want to protect your data, you put two hdd in RAID 1 which writes identical data to both drives, so that if one ever dies, you'll always have a backup copy.
I have two WD SATA 36GB Raptors in RAID 0, and each hdd is fast by itself at 10k rpm. I don't know how much extra performance you gain for playing games with a RAID 0 configuration, but it definitely helps when unzipping or installing programs as it can read/write extremely fast.
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d-rtyboy

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#6 d-rtyboy
Member since 2006 • 3178 Posts
RAID is compeletely useless in a gaming rig. For a server there might be some use for the 0.0000001% performance boost. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time and effort setting it up. I could see doing a RAID 1 setup, just to have an auto-backup system, but RAID 0 is a complete waste. Don't believe me? Check this out: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=10
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Odysseus145

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#7 Odysseus145
Member since 2004 • 496 Posts
I have two 80GB harddrives in RAID 0.  There is no noticable difference.  When I get my new motherboard they're going to be seperate.
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Dark_Dracos

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#8 Dark_Dracos
Member since 2005 • 519 Posts
how do u set the two HDD's to RAID 0
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Cain_Avalon

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#9 Cain_Avalon
Member since 2003 • 25 Posts

I would go with RAID-5. It is more time consuming to configure but it provides more speed and security. Plus if one hardrive fails you still have everything. The thing is unless you are using 3 or more hard drives you may just want to go with RAID 1

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Wesker776

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#10 Wesker776
Member since 2005 • 7004 Posts

how do u set the two HDD's to RAID 0Dark_Dracos

Usually, you can configure a RAID array in the BIOS by inserting a RAID disk.

As someone else said, RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks. It involves putting a number of drives (two or more) to work as one huge drive, sort of. There are many different type of RAID setups, so you'll have to go through them yourself, but the more significant ones involve striping data or mirroring data.

For example, in a RAID1 setup, two drives of equal size can be put together where data is mirrored from one hard drive to another. Why? Because if one drive fails, you'll have all your data on another drive for instant recovery. That's just one, however.

Have a good read, or look for a good online guide to RAID. 

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