How to setup RAID

[superman22x]

I have a 250GB Harddrive now, and its getting filled. less than 30GB left. I am thinking about getting around 500GB more around christmas. If I buy 2 250gb or 2 320gb drives, can I plug them in, and run them in raid if my mobo supports raid? Or do I still need a seperate raid controller? And can I run them in raid, while still having my 250gb available?

Thanks

 

[Kage]

If your original 250GB drive will still be used, and you just want to insert 2 to RAID with as extras, then this should be possible without losing any data.

What you'll need to do is make sure your motherboard supports RAID. If it does, it'll also have built in controllers, so you'll have to read the manual to find out exactly how, as you'll probably need to do some BIOS work, and then install the drivers within Windows to finish the setting up, and syncing.

 

[superman22x]

Ok, thanks, I am not sure if I am going to do it, but I might. Does it make a decent improovement in speed?

 

[Kage]

Hmm... depends which RAID you go for.

I'm guessing your planning on going with RAID 0, which means it'll stripe data across two drives, to increase loading and reading speed.

It should boost, but I don't think you'd notice a mjaor improvement. I wouldn't personally do this for the fact if one drive goes, you've lost what was on both, since it needs both drives to read from.

RAID 1 is a nice one though, which mirrors, so write speeds are slower, but read speeds are slightly faster, and it means that if you lose one drive, you always have a backup, allowing you to buy a new one, and replace, and sync.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

 

[superman22x]

Ok, well, I think I'll just buy one drive. One of those newer parallel recording ones if I can.