Alright I have never even attempted to look up RAID or know anything about it so I am trying to expand my knowledge. What is the advantages of RAID. I currently have 2 500GB HDD's. 1 is my C: drive and 1 is my D: drive. If i were to put them in a RAID, what advantages would I see? How does it affect reformatting as well? Can you RAID these 2 drives when they are currently in use, or only when they are empty? I am actually running out of space on both these drives and am looking for another 1 TB drive either to replace 1 of the 500GB HDD's or to just add to both them. Would I be able to put that one in RAID? Well I better stop asking so many questions or they won't all get answered lol. Thanks for any help you have on the subject.
Advantages of RAID and questions.
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JogaBonito1502
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RAID is a series of array configurations for hard-drives. The most common RAIDS are 0, 1, 5, 10. Here's a brief explanation:
RAID0 - 2 HDD array to increase performance. Storage space of array = storage space of smallest HDD * 2.
RAID1 - 2 HDD array where one is a carbon-copy of the other. Storage space of array = storage space of smallest HDD.
RAID5 - 3+ HDD array where data is protected from loss of one disk. Storage space of array = (number or HDDs - 1) * storage space of smallest disk.
RAID10 - Pretty much RAID0 & RAID1 together. Requires 4HDDs.
I think the HDDs must be empty in order for you to set up RAID.
RAID0 - 2 HDD array to increase performance. Storage space of array = storage space of smallest HDD * 2.
RAID1 - 2 HDD array where one is a carbon-copy of the other. Storage space of array = storage space of smallest HDD.
RAID5 - 3+ HDD array where data is protected from loss of one disk. Storage space of array = (number or HDDs - 1) * storage space of smallest disk.
RAID10 - Pretty much RAID0 & RAID1 together. Requires 4HDDs.
I think the HDDs must be empty in order for you to set up RAID.
Computer Head
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Well with RAID 0 (striping) those two drives would combine and make a 1TB drive. It also increases speed. With RAID 1 (mirroring) it would be one 500 GB hard drive, but they are mirror copies of each other so if one hard drive bites the dust, you swap out the hard drives and the RAID rebuilds its mirror without any reformatting.
You will need to format them in order to set up the RAID because you set up the RAID at the time of creating the volume (partition).
You can use two separate sized drives, but in order to successfully accomplish RAID, the "volumes" involved must be the same size. Example, to raid your 500GB hard drive, you need the entire 500GB drive as one volume, and 500GB of the 1TB drive as the other volume, and then RAID those together. Then you would most likely create a normal volume for the other 500GB of the 1TB drive, if that makes sense.
You're fine, mate. That's what we are here for.
Sounds complicated. Well not really but I would lose the files I currently have on the 500GB Hard drive to accomplish this and that would defeat the purpose.
So RAID 0 Stripping, this just makes the hard drive appear as 1 drive correct? It does not add any performance boost?
RAID 0 Mirroring, from what I understand would be 2 500GB Hard drives appearing as 1 500GB Hard drive, and according to JogaBonito1502, adds some performance boost. Does this add a big performance boost? And according to Computer Head mirrors the Hard drive so if 1 fails I still have all my files, and if I understand correctly, it increases read or write speeds? If that is correct how does it compare to say a VelociRaptor drive? If thats not what it means then what is this performance boost?
netBooger
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RAID 0:
RAID 0 (striping) means that when your system saves information to your hard disk it will spread it across both RAIDed drives as if it were one. This will increase seek times when you load an operating system or are running programs ets... Problem is if one of the hard drives fail then you are screwed because data is stored on both drives.
If you used RAID 0 with 2 500GB hard drives then it would appear as 1TB hard drive.
RAID1:
RAID 1 uses mirroring which will store all of your data on the first hard drive and the second hard drive will be used basically as an exact replica of your main drive. This will cut your storage space in half. So if you have 2 500GB hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration you will only have 500GB of total usable space.
With RAID 1 if one hard drive fails then you will still have your backup or main drive so you will not lose any information.
RAID 1 is slower than RAID 0 because of the extra overhead of having to write everything to disk twice (once for your main drive, and a second time for the mirrored or backup drive).
RAID 0 will give you about a 20% speed boost if using two Raptor II's.
But remember that it is less reliable because if either drive fails you lose all data.
If you still don't understand read this short article and it tell you the differences.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=2
If you just want to see benchmarks then just use this link.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=5
RAID 0 (striping) means that when your system saves information to your hard disk it will spread it across both RAIDed drives as if it were one. This will increase seek times when you load an operating system or are running programs ets... Problem is if one of the hard drives fail then you are screwed because data is stored on both drives.
If you used RAID 0 with 2 500GB hard drives then it would appear as 1TB hard drive.
RAID1:
RAID 1 uses mirroring which will store all of your data on the first hard drive and the second hard drive will be used basically as an exact replica of your main drive. This will cut your storage space in half. So if you have 2 500GB hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration you will only have 500GB of total usable space.
With RAID 1 if one hard drive fails then you will still have your backup or main drive so you will not lose any information.
RAID 1 is slower than RAID 0 because of the extra overhead of having to write everything to disk twice (once for your main drive, and a second time for the mirrored or backup drive).
RAID 0 will give you about a 20% speed boost if using two Raptor II's.
But remember that it is less reliable because if either drive fails you lose all data.
If you still don't understand read this short article and it tell you the differences.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=2
If you just want to see benchmarks then just use this link.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=5
The advantages of a RAID array are an increased read/write access speed, data redundancy, or a combination of both.
Depends on the RAID array you choose to use. Configured in a RAID 0 array you should obtain an increase in the read/write access speed to the array. If one drive fails in this array then you loose everything. Configured in a RAID 1 array you will gain data redundancy. You have data protection should one drive fail at the expense of a slight decrease in read/write access speed.
Reformatting the array is the same as with a single drive.
You can configure an array with empty or full hard drives. However if you configure a RAID 0 array you will loose everything on those drives. But you can configure a RAID 1 array if you have enough space on one of the drives to hold the data contained on both. I.E. you could copy everything on the D: drive to the C: drive, if there's space to do so, leaving an empty D: drive. Then set the RAID driver to mirror the C: drive to create your RAID 1 array, as an example.
Yes. And the logical thing to do there would be to first consider whether you want read/write access speed or data protection, then configure the two 500GB drives in the appropriate array excluding the 1TB drive from the array as a standalone drive.
It's a pleasure.
