Newbie Raid question

kieofwoo · Post by **kieofwoo** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 10:32 am

I just set up my first raid (0) array using 2 WD SE's and the Highpoint controller on my Abit KR7a board.

The drives are 80GB each and I'm pretty sure I set up the array correctly (there's not much too it when you just use the Highpoint BIOS).

But the RAID drive appears as 160GB.

Shouldn't it be 80GB?
Seeing as the drive is RAID 0 and the 2 drives are sharing the data amongst themselves?

Or have I got that completely wrong?

BTW Windows XP loads like a beast now

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 10:44 am

You indeed have it setup as RAID 0...which is "striping". This is done for performance, not for data integrity. If one drive fails...you're totally hosed, dead in the water, lost data. But the performance increase of RAID 0 is substantial...since you can read and write to both drives at the same time. This is what most home and gaming rigs have setup. Just keep your important "must have" data on another drive or partition, or do backups.

What you're thinking about, a pair of 80 gig drives seen as a single 80 gig drive...is RAID 1...mirroring. This is done for redundancy...if one drive fails, the other keeps you going, since each drive has identicle data. No performance gains though...often in real life, a slight performance hit. But this is done on low end servers usually...for sake of redundancy.

kieofwoo · Post by **kieofwoo** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 11:21 am

Thank you oh wise cat

It seems I was getting my raid 0 and my raid 1 mixed up. This is actually good news to me because now I have twice as much space as I thought I had!!

I will be careful to keep all my valuable data backed up, I just had a drive die on me so I appreciate the importance of backing up now

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 11:44 am

Originally posted by kieofwoo
Thank you oh wise cat

It seems I was getting my raid 0 and my raid 1 mixed up. This is actually good news to me because now I have twice as much space as I thought I had!!

I will be careful to keep all my valuable data backed up, I just had a drive die on me so I appreciate the importance of backing up now

There ya go! As long as you know the risk of RAID 0...and you keep your valuable data safe...you're all set. I ran RAID 0 for years...proper cooling of the drives, having good drives in the first place...and maintenance now and then, they never failed me.