RAID 0 question

rdeverett · 01-26-2011, 11:31 AM

I made the mistake of getting an 80g HDD for my latest budget build (I barely filled a 40g on my old comp so i figured it'd be enough) and now it's almost full. I want to order another and do a RAID 0 setup. I understand that RAID 0 performs 'striping' on each HDD, so would I need to clear my current HDD when I setup RAID 0? Thanks.

Dngrsone · 01-26-2011, 12:28 PM

RAID 0 requires two drives of the same type; in other words, two 80GB drives. Best way is to use identical products.

RAID 0 is not really a good way to go, in my opinion-- it's supposed to reduced data access times by roughly half, but that is only of use to large corporate concerns and high-end gamers. Since the data is split between the two drives, if one drive goes, then you've lost all of your data.

If you are going to use RAID, then I recommend at least RAID 1-- same pair of drives, but your data is mirrored between both drives, so if one fails, you have everything on the other.

rdeverett · 01-26-2011, 12:42 PM

Thanks for the info. I'm not too concerned about the security of files on my computer due to a crash (everything important is on some jump drives) so I'm more focused on the increased performance of read/write times of RAID 0.

I'm planning on getting another 80g seagate barracuda sometime this week. I really just need to know if I have to clear my current HDD before i setup RAID 0.

j03 · 01-26-2011, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

RAID 0 requires two drives of the same type; in other words, two 80GB drives. Best way is to use identical products.

RAID 0 is not really a good way to go, in my opinion-- it's supposed to reduced data access times by roughly half, but that is only of use to large corporate concerns and high-end gamers. Since the data is split between the two drives, if one drive goes, then you've lost all of your data.

If you are going to use RAID, then I recommend at least RAID 1-- same pair of drives, but your data is mirrored between both drives, so if one fails, you have everything on the other.

You dont NEED identical disks. They can be of different capacities - for instance, you could have a 250GB hard drive and a 320GB hard drive in a RAID0 array - but the total capacity of the array would be 500GB rather than 620GB.

Dngrsone · 01-26-2011, 12:53 PM

Setting up a RAID will require you to format the drives, so yes, you would lose all data on those drives.

rdeverett · 01-26-2011, 01:03 PM

Thanks for the info. Looks like i'll be reformatting soon.

j03: If I have an 80g and a 160g in RAID 0, would the remaining 80g from the 160g HDD be wasted/unusable? Or would it just not be included in the RAID 0 array?

JCB · 01-26-2011, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rdeverett

Thanks for the info. Looks like i'll be reformatting soon.

j03: If I have an 80g and a 160g in RAID 0, would the remaining 80g from the 160g HDD be wasted/unusable? Or would it just not be included in the RAID 0 array?

it will be wasted / unusable

Chipeater · 01-26-2011, 03:49 PM

I'm not sure with Windows Vista/7, but I would think that you could create two 80GB partitions on the 160GB drive and use one of them with a 80GB partition from a different drive to create a RAID 0 array, leaving the second partition on the 160GB drive to be used outside of the array. I've seen this done with hardware RAID controllers, but I've never tried it with Windows.

rdeverett · 01-27-2011, 01:03 PM

Thanks for the info Chipeater i'll have to look into that.

On a side note, I ordered another HDD last night. Apparently they stopped making the Seagate 80g so I ordered a 250g since it was the same price as the 160g after a promo code. A lot of sites say that you need 2 identical HDD for RAID 0, but j03 said earlier that you can have hard drives of different capacity. I just wanted to verify that before I get started this weekend.