RAID 0 Partition

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Kurdain1

Distinguished
Nov 30, 2007
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Hi,
I read the RAID FAQ but I am a little confused if I understood it correctly.

I plan to follow suit to the Toms Hardware computer build and run 2 of the 750 GB WD Caviar drives in parallel, RAID 0.

I am building a computer basically from scratch and installing windows Vista.
Relevant info:
Stiker Extreme MB
Vista
2 of the Caviar 750 GB Hard Drives.

What I want to do is install the OS, from scratch, to a 150 GB partition, then partition the remaining 600 GB into 300 GB and 300 GB. I like doing this because if I want to format or erase 1 logical drive I don't lose the rest, preference really.

I have also never ran a RAID array before.

From what I read:
1. Plug in the drives to the raid array
2. Boot up computer and enter Raid BIOS.
3. Select stripe size (what is it? 2? I will have 2 drives in RAID 0 so is stripe size 2? What should it be? Mostly 90% gaming and some 10% business/webdesign use)
4. Reboot from Vista CD?
5. Says install RAID drivers from Floppy, but the motherboard comes with a driver CD, I think, haven't got it yet. How do I install the drivers from CD or does it matter?
6. Reboot?
7. I have a bootable floppy with fdisk and stuff on it, do I set up my partitions at this point? Do I have to partition each drive identically or at this point are both drives being treated as 1 drive and partitioning does it to both exactly? It's an old 98 boot disk though, is there a better way to partition this? I want to use NTSF?
8. Reboot?
9. Install Vista normally.

I am taking my computer to family 850 miles away from home and want to build my computer while I am up there.
So I really want to know what I am doing beforehand.

Thank you for clearing this up for me.

-JP
 
K

Kurdain1

Distinguished
Nov 30, 2007
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Oh 1 other thing.
I will be running 32 bit Vista, will I have any problems addresing this much hard drive space?

I know way back there was a limit on the size of hard drives that windows would see, is this pretty much gone for all practical purposes?
 
roadrunner197069

roadrunner197069

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Sep 3, 2007
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First of all your drives wont be 750 so you cant do 150 300/300. The rest I am unsure I havent ste up a raid yet. I plan to in the near future.

I have a 500g and it is actually only 465.
 
imrul

imrul

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Jun 22, 2007
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raid first, then it will be treated as one drive... just change mobo settings to boot from cd.... vista cd can make the partitions before installing vista
 
K

Kurdain1

Distinguished
Nov 30, 2007
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18,715


Thanks, I didn't know it would allow you to do that.

Was the sequence I typed in correct?
 
zenmaster

zenmaster

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Feb 21, 2006
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Are you really sure you want to do RAID??

It's quite dangerous unless you really know what you are doing.

#1) RAID - 0 would result in 1500GB, not 750GB. It would be designed for high performance with a good chance of complete system loss.
 
zenmaster

zenmaster

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Feb 21, 2006
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OK, Let me explain for the many readers who don't understand RAID.

RAID-0 will use two drives to appear as a single drive.
The effective disk space available will be twice the size of the smallest drive.

Each file will be split between both drives, which can improve certain functions by a fair amount.
However, the failure of any one drive will result in complete data loss.

Based upon Google HDD studies, there is approximately a 14% chance of total data loss in year 1.
The chance of total dataloss increases to 30% by the end of the second year.

This only includes HDD failure and not many software or human errors.

For more details, Wikipedia would be a good place to start.
 
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