Basic Raid question/advice - Nvidia nforce4 board

[bs73]

Hi,

I have built a new PC - amd x2 3800, epox 9npa ultra mobo, seagate 250 gig sata I hdd's.

I was thinking of pairing the drives up into a RAID configuration.

Questions:
- has anyone got good advice on what RAID type to use - redundancy or striping?...with low failure rates of hdd's these days should i go for speed or will that not buy me much and i should go for safety?

- i have already installed the OS, along with a bunch of apps on my first drive - can i still set up a RAID configuration without having to re-do all of this? How do i do this, any special steps over and above the standard raid set up instructions??

thanks

 

[dangerwillrobinson]

What type of RAID (software/hardware)? Also, it's probably not a good idea to install your OS on the RAID. Why not just use the drives seperately? That way if one fails you have the other and you don't loose everything, and you can use all the space on your drives. Remember with RAID0 you lose everything with 1 drive failure, RAID1 you cut your available space in half, and RAID5 requires atleast 3 drives.

 

[tyborg]

it's an Nforce 4 board, so unless he bought software or a card, it's most likely the onboard mobo RAID. Basically, whatever fits your purpose. if you're going to be doing extremely mission-critical tasks on this machine, make it RAID 1, as it's the easiest to recover from a drive failure. If it's just for gaming/fun stuff, and it's not critical, go for RAID 0, as it's rather speedy. if you can buy a third drive, and your software/hardware/motherboard supports it, go for RAID 5, as it is a good combination of both speed and redundancy, although it does take some work to recover. If you can get four drives, try a RAID 0+1 or a RAID 10.

and RAID 0 speed increases are somewhat questionable, so if a little extra speed isn't that important, just set it up as 2 seperate drives.