My first raid

[cheeks121]

I've built several computers but I have never set up a raid...Its my understanding that you set up raid in the bios before you install windows, right?

My other question is if I set up a raid 5 with two of these: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002... 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

and one of these from a previous build:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

When I put all three into raid, I was planning on using the second one for parity building, and the other two for striping, which if I understand it right is raid 5, will it slow it down to the 3gb speed of the second one?

 

[enewmen]

If you are using an Intel motherboard that supports RAID5 and have Vista/Win 7. Then do this:
Enable RAID in the BIOS.
When rebooting, press CTRL-I when you see the RAID information come on the screen (something like this).
Select the drives you want for RAID and create it in the Intel text interface.
You should now see the RAID array in Windows.
Download and install and run the newest Intel Matrix Storage Manager. This is necessary if a drive fails.

Use at least 4 drives for RAID5 (You can use 3 drives, but the benifits are more limited)
RAID5 is much safer than no RAID. But backup anyway if 2 drives fail or the BIOS/controller fails for some dumb reason.

 

[rand_79]

I'd stay away from raid 5 esp for a system drive.

raid is much better with identical drives

being that those are all the same size it "SHOULD" work fine.

no regular HDD approaches sata2(3gb/s) speeds yet so you are fine.

 

[enewmen]

@ 79.

You're right.
I guessed cheeks will want a single drive or RAID0 for the System. Then have the RAID5 for the data drive. This will then make much more sense.