RAID scan bootup

[Hellfighter]

my system never had raid, but i heard it would run better if it was install.

like to know is this true or not?

can it be install into a system that was never setup for it?

[Steve]

you need to do some reading really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

but basically you would be looking at raid in 2 ways

raid 0 - striped

spreads your data over 2 or more hard drives. a real basic way to look at this is that you have two hard drives doing the work of one so twice as fast (well not twice as fast, but i said basic thinking here).

however if one hard drive gets corrupted then you lose ALL your data.


raid 1 - mirrored

this is 2 hard drives that both have the exact same data, but you only see one in my computer. you dont get any speed benefit, but you do have a backup when one of your hard drives fails



then thre is a lot of other ways of setting up raid, for example raid5 that combines the above, so you have performance and reliability. and others that can continue working if 2 or more hard drives fail at the same time.


i'd say the majority of home users dont really need raid. overclockers and benchmarkers would have it, some gamers use raid 0, and others use raid 1 if their data is critical, but you would have external backup anyway in that case. i guess if you were a big video editor then raid 0 would be handy.

[Steve]

oh you would need a RAID controller - onboard RAID has been common for a few years at least on most motherboards.

or if you are short of headers, u can pickup raid pci/pci-e cards for a reasonable price.

DO NOT use software raid.

if setting up raid, best option is to buy 2 or more hard drives that are exactly the same (size and manufacturer).

[Hellfighter]

Originally posted by Steve
oh you would need a RAID controller - onboard RAID has been common for a few years at least on most motherboards.

or if you are short of headers, u can pickup raid pci/pci-e cards for a reasonable price.

DO NOT use software raid.

if setting up raid, best option is to buy 2 or more hard drives that are exactly the same (size and manufacturer).

i had one for my old system (PCI-Card raid for IDE 4ea ports) trash it could not get it to work with the new system! think when my old system gone bad it burnout a lot of things. i may buy another soon later down the road.

ps thats good to know Thanks steve