1tb Hard drive - Page 2 - Tech Support Forums

J1mmy · August 2nd, 2008, 06:26 AM

Cheers, I'll give it a shot when I get the drive. Can I only support 1 RAID drive? If this is the case, I should really be using for the OS, but I don't want to reinstall everything.

pullmyfoot · August 2nd, 2008, 09:54 AM

I wouoldnt wanna risk 2 tb worth of stuff on a raid 0 setup though. 2X the chances of it failing and losing everything. And dont do software raid. Its junk. Most newer motherboards will be able to support raid setups from within the bios

ShyguyXPC · August 2nd, 2008, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pullmyfoot

I wouoldnt wanna risk 2 tb worth of stuff on a raid 0 setup though. 2X the chances of it failing and losing everything. And dont do software raid. Its junk. Most newer motherboards will be able to support raid setups from within the bios

wouldn't be so quick to judge on that, its not that bad, it does give quite an increase in speeds, but again it is advised that if one has the ability to do Hardware RAID then go that route, the only reason I did software was I wanted to try out RAID 0 to see if it would work & be a noticeable increase over a single drive (in my case, if it was noticeably faster than a single regular drive, comparable or better than a Raptor, which I had sold in my old system to boost the price). and it was, now that I'll be reinstalling windows in a week or so here, I'll be doing hardware from my motherboard with it.

but pullmyfoot is right about not risking 2TB of data on RAID 0, not unless you have another 2TB of drives for say a 0+1 setup, to mirror the 2TB striped array on another 2TB striped array.

as to supporting 1 RAID drive, you should be able to support for as many connections you have, since you can run a 0+1 setup, that would be at least 4 drives in a RAID setup, be it 4 drives in RAID 0, or 4 in RAID 1, or whatever...

not sure about RAID 5, still not very familiar with that one, & every time I read about it, it throws me for a loop on how it works, but oh well.

J1mmy · August 2nd, 2008, 01:38 PM

So connections in RAID have an increase chance of failing. The stuff on this harddrive will just be for storage. It won't be like the Windows drive that is being accessed all the time.

Software-RAID HOWTO: Understanding RAID

ShyguyXPC · August 2nd, 2008, 11:53 PM

no, no, no....

Different Forms of RAID, have different redundancy levels, RAID 1, is Mirroring, so if you have 2 drives, one is a back up of the other, should one fail, you can rebuild the other, with the 2nd drive. in RAID 0, Striping, you have 2 or more drives, the data is basically divided up over the entire array, in laymans terms, with a 2 drive RAID 0 setup, 50% is on one drive, the other 50% of a file is on the other, so if one drive in a RAID 0 array fails, ALL data is lost/corrupted... with RAID 0 you can have as many drives as you want, if you want 4 drives in RAID 0, you'll have a single piece of data written across all 4 drives...

thats why RAID 0+1 is a good plan, but can be expensive since you need at least 4 drives to do it, RAID 5 from what I understand can be done with 3 drives or more, & should one fail, the whole array can still be used, not exactly sure how RAID 5 works myself, I've tried reading up on it, & its over my head, don't quite understand how it works with 3 drives, unless the data is overlapped over the 3 drives as if you were striping drives 1 & 2, & then 2 & 3... but not sure about that... sometimes with this stuff I need a picture book to figure it out LOL...

but if the stuff will be used for Storage, as in stuff you may not want to lose down the road, RAID 0 isn't the way to go, unless your willing to do a RAID 0+1 or 5 array...

RAID 0 really should only be used for short term storage or for gaming (you can always reinstall your game if the array crashes), for short term storage, for example, like what I use mine for much of the time, recording game footage with FRAPS, until I can convert the files to something smaller or making a video/movie with the files. or like I have Photoshop scratch disk set to the RAID array & some of my 3D apps installed on the RAID setup as well, to help with responsiveness & drop rendering times a smidge too, though my important data is stored/saved on the main Windows Boot Drive... until my 500GB comes in this Tuesday or Wednesday.

another link to read up with: RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

pullmyfoot · August 3rd, 2008, 01:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShyguyXPC

with RAID 0 you can have as many drives as you want, if you want 4 drives in RAID 0, you'll have a single piece of data written across all 4 drives

If one drive fails in a raid 0 array, everything gets lost because everything stored is split between the drives. With any other array you are safe but your gonna be needing more drives (except for raid 1 where you only need 2, but then again that slows down speeds instead of increasing)

Software raid is junk compared to hardware raid. Most software that trys to mess with hardware is just plain not as good as compared to actually tweaking stuff from the hardware itself

ShyguyXPC · August 3rd, 2008, 02:57 AM

basically as I've explained in the prior posts...

J1mmy · August 3rd, 2008, 06:05 AM

Golly...

So in RAID 0, where the content gets split between drives, will I see only ONE drive in My Computer showing the total of those drives collectively? -This is what they use at data center's isn't it.

pullmyfoot · August 3rd, 2008, 08:38 AM

basically. Just that when its imortant they do raid 5, which is raid 0 and 1 combined. split across 2 drives in raid 0 for speed, then the entire thing is mirrored to 2 other drives in another seperate raid 0.

ShyguyXPC · August 3rd, 2008, 12:58 PM

you sure? from what i read, RAID 0+1 (which is what you described) & RAID 5 are two different versions... RAID 0+1 needs 4 or more disks, RAID 5 requires 3 or more.