Need Comment on this setup please

[Guest]

Hello,

I'm upgrading my pc and planning to use 2 20gig maxtor in a RAID 0 array for primary OS and gaming.

I have a question regard is it better to have both of the maxtor on the same cable and set them as master/slave on one IDE cable or have 2 separate cable and set them both as master?. Since im also planning to add a 3rd HD in non raid to use to store mp3s and such, will the 3rd HD be set to slave on a 3rd IDE channel?

 

[flamethrower205]

Best performance will be if the Raid hard drives have their own cable. Are you getting a Mobo w/ raid built in? Don't, get a raid controller for teh PCI. Then each raid hard drive can have its own cable, and you non- raid will have its own controller as well.

When I rule the world, Apple will only mean the fruit.

 

[Lars_Coleman]

The Manufacture of the RAID controller usually suggests if you are running two hard drive in the RAID array to make them both master's. So in such you would have one Primary Master (IDE3) and one Secondary Master (IDE4). Both on there own ribbons. That's how I have my setup with two 30GB 7200RPM Maxtor's.

If you are going to run three hard drives on the RAID controller you would probably want to put the one you are using for data storage on the Primary (IDE3) as a slave. I myself would put it on IDE 1 or 2 and not use the RAID 3 and 4 for that drive. Like the way I'm working it right now is I'm running RAID 0 and then I have another hard drive that I use to boot off of on IDE 1. I still get ATA100 support on the regular IDE controllers but I reinstall a lot and don't want to mess arround with the reliability of my RAID array.

I think you have the right idea!

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[Guest]

Thanks for the help!,

From what i can understand, ill be running the 2 maxtor in raid 0 on the raid controller card. and then the 3rd hd, the slave will be running that ribbon cable to the mobo's IDE channels.
Is there any degregation in performance when using a pci raid controller? the mobo i have in mind do not have built in raid

 

[Lars_Coleman]

I have had both at one point and the bench marks seem to be worse on the intergrated controllers then the third party card ... but who knows! Either a PCI controller or intergrated on the Motherboard, it still uses the PCI bus.

I would look at getting the Promise FastTRAK TX2 RAID controller ...

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>