I Need help with RAID device

[fizur2002]

I am going to be getting a Gigabyte GA-8IHXP motherboard that has Raid devices on them. I have 2 hard drives, one is a 40gig Seagate at 7200rpm and a 80gig Western Digital at 7200rpm with 8mg of cache. I would like to keep the drives separate, but while keeping them on the raid devices for the speed. I DO NOT want to have them as one big hard drive. I DO NOT want to make them mirrored either. Is there any way i can rig it up to have them as 2 separate drives with their full capacity while on the raid devices?

[omega31]

You can't do that with the Promise "Lite" controller on that board. BpB has said that. Also said that the only onboard raid controller that supports what you want to do is highpoint.

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=120860&highlight=onboard+promise+raid

[fizur2002]

so just put them on the regular IDE devices. If i wanted to use the raid, then i will probably buy two WD 40gig hard drives with 8mg of cache at 7200rpm, and run them as one hard drive. wouldnt that be pretty fast?

[BipolarBill]

Yeppers!

[fizur2002]

Wouldnt that rival that of a scsi drive?

[fizur2002]

or even be faster

[BipolarBill]

I single SCSI drive? It would match it. Multiple SCSI drives? No way.

[Philip1952]

It might match it on data transfer rates. But the SCSI drive will have about a third of the access time of a raid setup.

While your WD 8 meg drives are getting thier act together in raid. The SCSI drive would have half the data on the way for use.

I didn't find the price on 40 gig WD BB series drives. The 60 gig drives are $94 each. Multiply that times 2 equals the price of a 36 gig IBM 15k SCSI drive. The only thing else you would need is a controller card. The LSI U160 is around $40.
If the storagereview offer is still good. Then you would get the card for free. Buy a cable and your set.

If your thinking the raid is close to SCSI it might be in a narrow window of use. Large file transfers and so on. But in small files and random access. It will make a computer seem very sluggish.

I have used IDE Raid. I use SCSI now.

[fizur2002]

I plan on using the raid device to work with digital videos, ripping DVDs and converting them. Is that a good enough reason to use Raid? or should i get a scsi for that purpose only.

[BipolarBill]

For your purposes, IDE RAID (there's SCSI RAID too ya know) would be fine. For day-to-day use, SCSI would be better.

[Philip1952]

If your planing on working large video files an such. The raid would be good for that. But if the OS is on the raid setup. I think you would be better with the SCSI setup.

Raid 0 for speed would work good on the video. But there is no data security at all. So this would require another drive just to store files on.

Raid 1 has data security. But it will not be any faster than a single drive. In data writing it would be slower.


So I guess we need to know. Do you plan on putting the operating system on the raid setup. If the answer is yes. I would suggest the SCSI setup with a large IDE drive as a storage drive.

[fizur2002]

as i specified earlier, the operation system is on a Seagate hard drive, storage is on a 80gig WD and video editing will be on a 40gig WD special edition

[AllGamer]

I think you are Missing a Very important POint about RAIDs

to Be a RAID you must have AT the VERY Least

2 x HDD=Size = RAID

so in your case

you'll need 2 x 80 Gigs HDD, and the 40 gig mounted as a standalone IDE

or maybe set up 2 RAIDs 0

2 x 80 Gb = 160 Gb
and
2 x 40 Gb = 80 Gb

or 2 x RAID 1

2 x 80 Gb = 80 Gb+80 Gb backup
and
2 x 40 Gb = 40 Gb+80 Gb Backup

or 2 x RAID 0+1

4 x 80 Gb = 160 Gb + 160 Gb backup
4 x 40 Gb = 80 Gb + 80 Gb backup

:t

or for more nicer details on RAIDs check this site out http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

[fizur2002]

I planned on buying two more 40gig hard drives, for the raid device, and have the 80gig WD and the 40gig Seagate on the regular ide controler.

[Philip1952]

The setup your planing looks good with the OS on a stand alone drive. Then you just using the raid for working on files with. This is what raid was designed for basically. You souldn't have any problems.