Raid 0 failure

[bklyn1028]

Have a raid 0....dual boot xp and vista...raid failure, get the little window that says raid disk failure...and in nvidia monitor says one of the drives is failing. Can boot to Vista, but not to xp. They are 2 hitachi 120gb. Have 6 partitions....xp, vista, programs, personal stuff (pics etc), junk (swap file) and games....just got 2 WD 160 gb want to start over. Raid 1 this time. question....are all these partitions necessary, eg...best way to set up, and....how do I tell which of HD failed....and can I do a raid 5 with 3 disks (the good hitachi).....whew!!
appreciate any help
thanks
Joe

 

[Fraggable]

Originally posted by: bklyn1028
Have a raid 0....dual boot xp and vista...raid failure, get the little window that says raid disk failure...and in nvidia monitor says one of the drives is failing. Can boot to Vista, but not to xp. They are 2 hitachi 120gb. Have 6 partitions....xp, vista, programs, personal stuff (pics etc), junk (swap file) and games....just got 2 WD 160 gb want to start over. Raid 1 this time. question....are all these partitions necessary, eg...best way to set up,

It's up to you. Some people want separate partitions for each purpose, some want 1 big disk. I usually create an OS + program partition, then a separate one for anything I don't want to lose with a Windows failure - I point my Documents folder at that partition and pretty much put everything in there. Then I backup that partition to an external drive or other computer. If you create a separate OS and software partition, you're just going to run out of space on one or the other eventually, and what's the point? you always have to change the target drive with software installations and some software defaults to the C: drive with no option to change.

and....how do I tell which of HD failed....and can I do a raid 5 with 3 disks (the good hitachi).....whew!!
appreciate any help
thanks
Joe

Should be able to get the serial # of the dying drive if Vista will boot and the software works.

You could do a RAID 5 with 2 160GB drives and a 120, your total usable space would be less than 240GB. If it were me, I'd RAID 0 the 2 160GB drives and use the 120GB as my data drive.

 

[bklyn1028]

I did a raid 0.....and now i'm gonna lose some stuff...not...important...those I keep on an external HD....just friggin GRAw....hate to start all over again.....so..methinks raid 1...after all.....160gb....for a gaming machine...is plenty...shit..i've had 2 120gb raid 0 for 2 yrs now...haven't even gotten close to filling them 1/2 way

 

[*kjm]

The only raid on my pc in SCSI... sorry I just don't see the point for home use. A little speed gain for benchmarks can make for big problems for a lot of people.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: bklyn1028
hate to start all over again.....so..methinks raid 1...after all.....160gb....for a gaming machine...is plenty...shit..

why...even...bother....ack...now I've...caught...that virus...too....

 

[corkyg]

RAID 0 is a choice - not a good one, but a choice. You reap what you sow. Looks like rebuild city.

 

[sgrinavi]

I had a similar problem, without the failure; I wanted to get the data off my 2x160 raid 0, up size and add some redundancy without reinstalling the system --

I added 2 new 320 gb drives and used the intel matrix manager to covert the 4 drives to a raid 5, I then removed one of the 160s and replaced it with a new 320, rebuilt the raid and repeated with the last 320, now I have over 600 mb of storage space, fast reads, redundany and ability to (nearly) auto-rebuild any drive that might go FUBAR.

 

[Snooper]

I like my five disk RAID 5 as well. All Seagate 320 ES disks. I didn't go into it for the performance increase (my reads are VERY nice), but more for the redundancy.