How Does RAID Work?

[Guest]

In the very near future i will be purchasing a new motherboard and hard drive, my question is - would it be advisable for me to get a motherboard that had RAID built into it? I currently have a 13gb hard drive and will be getting a 40gb hard drive and will be running them together in the same machine...so what exactly would the RAID function do to these 2 hard drives, i've heard it improves speed and reliability, how does it do this? I'm new to this so help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[FatBurger]

All RAID (except for spanning RAID), goes by the lowest size HDD you have.

RAID 0 - Theorectically doubles the speed of your hard drives. You would lose most of the space on your 40 GB, and in essence have 2x13=26GB of total space. Low reliability.

RAID 1 - Mirrors the data, so that if one hard drive fails, you're still safe. Again, you would lose most of the storage space on your 40GB, and end up with 13GB total. Mirroring does not take advantage of all your storage space, since storage is redundant.

RAID 0+1 - Does both of the above. 4 drives are needed. If you added two more 40GB, you would still only have 26GB of storage space.

Spanning - Just creates one hard drive out of multiple drives. Basically the opposite of partitioning. You'd end up with 53GB total.

These are all the options for IDE RAID. If you went to SCSI RAID, you would have more options (like RAID 5).

I'd provide you with my normal source for information on RAID, but their site appears down, so I can't get you the link.

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Rest in peace</font color=green>

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your help! So basically it's pointless me putting my old 13gb hard drive into my new pc, would RAID 0 still work with just my 40gb hard drive? Would it still double in speed and also maintain it's 40gb capacity?

 

[FatBurger]

Yes, but you'd need TWO 40GB drives, not just one. No RAID modes work on a single drive.
The whole point of RAID is to try and use two hard drives to their full potential. Sort of like a dual-processor system.

<font color=green>In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace</font color=green>

 

[Guest]

Right then...i dont see the point in buying 2 40gb hard drives just to have 40gb total capacity though, i think i'll have to read into it a bit more before i buy anything

 

[FatBurger]

If you went with RAID 0 (or spanning), you'd have 80GB capacity.

<font color=green>In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace</font color=green>