Raid 0 Reformat?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I'm building a media server for use in my living room. So far, so good.
I got a WD 120G drive, and I've installed XP on it.

I'm toying with the idea of getting an add-on card and a second drive to
set up a Raid 0 array. The reasons would be both for the added storage
capacity and speed of access to info.

Here's the question that's worrying me: If I wait until I've installed a
bunch of apps and data, and then I add the second drive, will I have to
reformat the first drive, and start all over again, and reinstall the OS
and apps and everything? If so, I should do it NOW, rather than wait
until I've spent a lot of time installing drivers and apps and data and
everything.

Or can I add a second drive and a RAID card later, and have the software
automagically rejigger everything onto the two drives?

And am I correct that a RAID 0 array acts like one big drive, for ease of
adminisration, and is faster than a single drive?

As always, thanks for any opinions and info.

--
....I'm an air-conditioned gypsy...

- The Who

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Thu, 8 Jul 2004 16:23:46 +0000 (UTC),
EskWIRED@spamblock.panix.com wrote:

>I'm building a media server for use in my living room. So far, so good.
>I got a WD 120G drive, and I've installed XP on it.
>
>I'm toying with the idea of getting an add-on card and a second drive to
>set up a Raid 0 array. The reasons would be both for the added storage
>capacity and speed of access to info.

It's not needed and probably not beneficial unless you had a TON
of systems streaming video from it. RAID0 isn't benefical for
added storage capacity either... if your motherboard can't
support the size or number of drives you want, use single-drive
spans instead of RAID0.


>Here's the question that's worrying me: If I wait until I've installed a
>bunch of apps and data, and then I add the second drive, will I have to
>reformat the first drive, and start all over again, and reinstall the OS
>and apps and everything?

Presuming you meant that the files were on the drive you wanted
in the RAID0 array, yes you have to backup everything and then
create partition, then format (with popular imaging programs like
DriveImage you wouldn't need to format or partition, IIRC, but
still the data is lost, simply that the imaging program does it
for you on the fly).

> If so, I should do it NOW, rather than wait
>until I've spent a lot of time installing drivers and apps and data and
>everything.

Yes, but are you sure you'll benefit from it?
Even a more traditional desktop PC doesn't benefit much from
RAID0, let alone a media server on a LAN, unless there were many
clients and GbE connection.

>
>Or can I add a second drive and a RAID card later, and have the software
>automagically rejigger everything onto the two drives?

No, a RAID1 can be rebuilt onto a 2nd drive but not RAID0.


>
>And am I correct that a RAID 0 array acts like one big drive, for ease of
>adminisration, and is faster than a single drive?

Ease? Whole lot easier to just use one bigger drive, or two
drives to separate data, or just avoid RAID since it has no real
benefit for your purpose. A drive only need be faster enough
that it's not a bottleneck, can perform realtime with the
requests, which any old single drive can do fine for audio or
compressed video, let alone a faster newer drive.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

If you install your OS and applications now on a single drive, if later you
wish to add a second drive and convert your system to RAID, yes, you will
have to reformat your drives and do a fresh installation of everything.

--
DaveW



<EskWIRED@spamblock.panix.com> wrote in message
news:ccjseh$l0c$3@reader2.panix.com...
> I'm building a media server for use in my living room. So far, so good.
> I got a WD 120G drive, and I've installed XP on it.
>
> I'm toying with the idea of getting an add-on card and a second drive to
> set up a Raid 0 array. The reasons would be both for the added storage
> capacity and speed of access to info.
>
> Here's the question that's worrying me: If I wait until I've installed a
> bunch of apps and data, and then I add the second drive, will I have to
> reformat the first drive, and start all over again, and reinstall the OS
> and apps and everything? If so, I should do it NOW, rather than wait
> until I've spent a lot of time installing drivers and apps and data and
> everything.
>
> Or can I add a second drive and a RAID card later, and have the software
> automagically rejigger everything onto the two drives?
>
> And am I correct that a RAID 0 array acts like one big drive, for ease of
> adminisration, and is faster than a single drive?
>
> As always, thanks for any opinions and info.
>
> --
> ...I'm an air-conditioned gypsy...
>
> - The Who

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Inline

--
Tumppi
Reply to group
=================================================
Most learned here on nntp://news.mircosoft.com
Helsinki, Finland (remove _NOSPAM)
(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
=================================================




<EskWIRED@spamblock.panix.com> kirjoitti viestissä
news:ccjseh$l0c$3@reader2.panix.com...
> I'm building a media server for use in my living room. So far, so good.
> I got a WD 120G drive, and I've installed XP on it.
>
> I'm toying with the idea of getting an add-on card and a second drive to
> set up a Raid 0 array. The reasons would be both for the added storage
> capacity and speed of access to info.

Both drives from the RAID card. Can't be on different controllers

>
> Here's the question that's worrying me: If I wait until I've installed a
> bunch of apps and data, and then I add the second drive, will I have to
> reformat the first drive, and start all over again, and reinstall the OS
> and apps and everything? If so, I should do it NOW, rather than wait
> until I've spent a lot of time installing drivers and apps and data and
> everything.

As I understand it, creating a RAID-0 destroys all data on the drives used
for that stripe-set
(Goes for all RAIDs)

>
> Or can I add a second drive and a RAID card later, and have the software
> automagically rejigger everything onto the two drives?

No

>
> And am I correct that a RAID 0 array acts like one big drive, for ease of
> adminisration, and is faster than a single drive?

Yes

>
> As always, thanks for any opinions and info.
>
> --
> ...I'm an air-conditioned gypsy...
>
> - The Who

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt, kony <spam@spam.com> wrote:

> It's not needed and probably not beneficial unless you had a TON
> of systems streaming video from it.

Thanks. I read your reply and then checked out Anandtech, who tested and
came up with exactly what you said:

----
The overall SYSMark performance graph pretty much says it all - a slight,
but completely unnoticeable, performance increase, thanks to RAID-0, is
what buying a second drive will get you.
----

The other factor they identify, which I hadn't considered, is that the
MTBF is halved using the non-redundant array.

I'll stick with my one drive, and if (when) it fills up, I'll jsut add
another. Thanks.

--
....I'm an air-conditioned gypsy...

- The Who