RAID0, RAID1 or no RAID?

[Marmion]

Hi guys,

I just built a new system, with 2x80GB SATA2 Seagate Barracudas.
I've stupidly gone on and installed all my stuff onto one of the HDs without setting up a RAID (which was the whole point of the 2 identical HDs).

Questions:

a) If I reformat and create a RAID, will Windows howl at me and make me phone up the nice people @ MS to re-activate (I already had to do this with adding 1GB of ram because intially one stick was DOA, and I guess my o/cing).

b) Is RAID0 risky? I know I get ~160GB of storage 'as one' and its faster, but am I risking my HD's failure. In other words, is the performance gain tangible in everyday websurfing/e-mails and light games (AOE3, & flight sim). Storage capacity is not an issue, 80GB is fine (only used 30GB on laptop and 30GB on old computer so far with 60GB and 40GB respective capacities).

Right, I'm off before my computer gets fried from the electrical storm

Thanks in advance!

Marmion

 

[KayKay]

raid 0
you will notice the difference, but it is a slight difference, and not a day and night sort of difference.

copying large folders, unrar'ing lots of files will be faster, thumbnails will load almost instantaneously etc.

if you decide to go with it, make sure you back up often.

raid 1

if you really really care about your data.

no raid:

two 80 gigs at your disposal

 

[Navid]

RAID0 will not benefit you for reading emails. It will not help much for gaming either. The only time in a game you access the hard drive is when you load a new map. After that, the map is loaded into RAM and RAID0 or not makes no difference.

RAID1 is useless for a typical home PC. RAID1 is not for data security. It is rather for file system being kept up. So think of a hospital where life-critical tasks are performed by computers. If a hard drive fails, RAID1 will keep the files up and running until the failed hard drive is replaced. That is the job of RAID1. But, RAID1 will not replace backup. You will still have to backup your data. If you by mistake delete a file, it will be gone and RAID1 is not going to get it back.

Put windows on the first partition on the first hard drive. Put your data (pictures, movies, music, pdf files, word documents, ....) on the second partition on the first drive.

Use the other hard drive for storing backups of your data and backup images of your windows partition.

This way, you have redundancy and can recover your data if either one of the drives fails. Always backup your data on a regular basis.

 

[Marmion]

Thanks guys, I'll pass on the RAID stuff
Gotta love thunderstorms and laptops on wireless :beer: