Question on RAID

[dragflameson]

Hello everyone!

I just had a quick question. I'm not exactly sure if I know what RAID is or not, but from what I understand it is taking 2 or more hard drives (in one system of course) and making them all act as one huge fast drive. Is this correct?

The reason why I ask is because I am running out of space on my current HD and I will have to get a new one soon enough. The thing is, is that I would like to keep saving all my files to the same directories I am saving certain files to now. I don’t want to split them up on different drives. I still want to keep them all together.

BTW - My motherboard is the ASUS A7V-266E

Thanks,
drag

[NDD]

The thing is, is that I would like to keep saving all my files to the same directories I am saving certain files to now. I don’t want to split them up on different drives. I still want to keep them all together.
Not possible with RAID. With RAID, you need BOTH drives to them appear as "one".

[dragflameson]

If you dont mind, what do you mean by that?

"With RAID, you need BOTH drives to them appear as "one"


There is no way I can continue to put all of my files in the same dir after I run out of space and add a new hard drive??? I thought thats what RAID is... is making both appear as one?

Thanks,
drag

[BipolarBill]

Both drives must be stripped, initialized as an array and then formatted to function as any sort of RAID array.

You have to start from zero.

[dragflameson]

Darn. Well now I have no idea what to do! Any sugestions?

drag

[BipolarBill]

Start by reading the manual. It's unfair to expect SysOpt to be your instructions.

Next, decide if you want to start from scratch or just add a RAID array to supplement your existing drive.

[sm8000]

If you're using WinXP or 2000, you can mount the new drive as a subfolder of one on your old drive through Disk Management. Don't even need RAID, which is probably a good thing.

[NDD]

Are you talking about Dynamic discs ?

[TiGgErDbC]

hehe i just set up raid, if your worried about it, and you are fairly good with comptuers jump into it, hehe i learnt a lot fast.. had to or else i wouldnt have a computer :)

btw the performance gains i got from my 2 7200 rpms drives was very impressive!

gl with whatever you choose

[sm8000]

Not sure if the drive becomes dynamic, I just know that in Disk Manager if you right-click on a given drive letter you can choose to "Change Drive Letter and Path". You don't need to change the drive letter, but you can "Allow access to this volume through the drive letter and paths listed below", so if you added the path C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\New Folder to the list for D:, then anything you put in New Folder (on the desktop, logged in as Administrator, both for example) should be stored in D:

Bill, do I have this right?

[BipolarBill]

If you mount the drive as a folder on another drive, it's a dynamic disk. I don't recommend it because it's tied to the operating system. When you reinstall Windows, the contents of the drive will be very difficult to recover.

Partition Magic can do this too through "merging". In that case, recovery is easier, but still not for the faint of heart.

[Midknyte]

dynamic disks require ntfs. you would also have a hard time recovering data, since many recovery programs do not support dynamic disks.

just get another drive and dump your data files on it. I doubt you would be filling the drive with that many pure programs and system files. you can also move your swapfile to the second hdd.

[dragflameson]

Im running Win2k Pro. I dont know, I'm pretty confused now, so I'm just going to get another 120GB or so HDD as a seperate drive and just put all my files on that drive or something.

Thanks,
drag

[NDD]

I don't like Dynamic disks either. I think you came with the best solution yourself ;)

[mobo57]

Drag:
There are several types of RAID configurations. I have set up a RAID 0 configuration with 2 WD 36 gig Raptors 150mps transfer rate @ 10,000 rpm. I have a third maxtor 120 gig installed on EIDE 1. ALl hardware based, I am running W2K Pro.

Basically, RAID configurations can be used to speed up loading of programs, protecting in the event of a HD crash your data or both. When you use a RAID 0 configuration as I have, files are striped onto both disks. So even though I have 2 36 gig disks, I actually have only 36 gigs of storage space. The benefit though is my file loading speeds are SIGNIFICANTLY faster than a ata 133.

There are all kinds of benchmarks using RAID with different HD's, check out Tom's Hardware. I ran some unofficial benchmarks, comparing my setup running originally with a single raptor, loading a saved game of UTII at the Avalon level versus my new configuration of the 2. Under the old configuration, the game level loaded in about 24 seconds. Now it loads in 8 to 10 seconds. No Bulls***. Windows W2K Pro loads in approx 1/2 the time.

My understanding is a RAID 5 configuration is the best of both worlds. This not only stripes the drives but mirrors the data to a third drive. In a crash of a drive you can rebuild from the other(s). But again it seems that you may have 3 drives at X gigs, but your storage is only the amount of the smallest drive (thats why using RAID it is best to match the storage space of the drives).

You can set up a RAID configuration through WIN 2K or XP, but it is better to have the hardware and drivers to do it (debatible).

Ugh, tired of typing, too much, love my RAID, goes REAL FAST. GOOD MEAT. LOVE SPEED.
)-|

[dragflameson]

mobo57,

Thank you for that explanation, I was reading a lot on RAID the other day and I understand it a lot better now. Like BipolarBill said, even though I was just asking for any suggestions, I shouldn’t have to bother you guys every time I have a little problem. But just to let you know, I am going to start building my next computer in the next couple of months and I'm going to use RAID on that system with WinXP Pro. But anyways, thanks again! Cya

drag

[genesound]

My understanding is a RAID 5 configuration is the best of both worlds. This not only stripes the drives but mirrors the data to a third drive. In a crash of a drive you can rebuild from the other(s). But again it seems that you may have 3 drives at X gigs, but your storage is only the amount of the smallest drive (thats why using RAID it is best to match the storage space of the drives). Raid 5 can use many drives or parts (blocks) of drives. The amount of storage yielded is the sum of storage for the number of drives (blocks) minus one drive (block). That extra drive (block) is for parity, but parity is not exclusive to any one drive (block), it rotates in the stripe, thusly:


http://www.sohoconsult.ch/raid/images/raid5.gif

If any drive fails, the data is still there and safe and online and useable, and can be restored by installing a new drive or putting a pre-installed "hot spare" online. The new drive will automatically be restored by calculating the difference between the surviving good drives and the parity, with a reduced performance hit during the process, of course, but it all can be done while online with hot swappable drives!

Ideally all drives are identical, but not necessarilly. The committment size to the raid, though (block size), must be identical. Furthermore different controllers will have different implementations and options.

Hope this was lucid enough and was of some help :t

[morpheus kain]

Actually with RAID 0 (which isn't raid in the first place....) you don't lose the space of the second hard drive. With raid 0 two 36gb disks should be seen as one 72gb drive....

[mobo57]

Good article on RAID's
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20020813/index.html