Raid or not to Raid !!!

[Guest]

Does a raid setup really make that much difference? I have to IBM 60GXP 20 GB drives... and have been told that in a Raid setup I can't format the drive of my choice but that may have been formatting while in windows, but can i use a boot disk and do a format to either drive ??.. Help !!

Thanks
Rustolemite

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Rustolemite on 05/31/01 04:39 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Gimmie more info, and i can help a hep load. Mainly, what mother board.

RAID makes the two drives run as one, and formatting is a breaze. To install Win98 on my RAID setup, I just booted from the CD-ROM and ran setup. IT formatted my harddrives and installed Win. Yes, there is an increase in performance. It's not as much as people brag, but its enough. Its also just fun to say ur running a RAID array at RAID 0.

If you really want speed, RAID 4 IBM 75XP 75Gb in RAID 0 (Yes! 4 drives working as 1, this is great with 4 7200RPM drives.) Its insainly expensive, but it is blazing fast.

Yes, I'm the BOY who got Win98 to load in under 10 sec... ah....

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info ... was going to run an ASUS A7M266 and add a RAID controller card with 2 IBM 60GXP 30 GB HD's, can i still format fron DOS with a boot disk ? and another dumb question since Win sees it as one drive can you change between the 2 when downloading or installing files to the drive of my choosing ?

 

[Mavicator]

I'm about to setup a RAID configuration also. I've never done it so if someone could give me a quick how to...?

Abit KT7A-RAID
AMD 1.33
(2) WD 40gb 7200
Win2k

Thanx in advance!

-- I don't see a dotted line... --

 

[FatBurger]

Ok, I have the same MB as you (although I haven't built my system yet...parts still on order), so here ya go.
The best way to do it, is set both drives to Master (there might be a diagram on the drive, depending on the brand), and then connect each drive to different RAID slots. I believe they're orange, though I could be wrong. They're the two IDE ports by themsleves, next to the two IDE and one floppy port. Anyhow, that'll give you the best performance. After that, reboot (well, turn on your computer, I suppose), enter BIOS and go to the RAID menu. I don't know exactly what it looks like, but it should be prety self-explanatory to set up. Remember to back up anything on the drives before doing all this. Then, format, and install Windows.

Apple? Macintosh? What are these strange words you speak?

 

[Guest]

I have a RAID 0 array set up on my Abit KT7A-RAID. Yes, you can format from DOS (that's what I did) after you set up the RAID array in the RAID controller BIOS. After you set up the array, neither DOS nor Win will see the 2 individual drives, but will only see the array as one drive. You will not be able to choose where the files will go (they will actually be on both drives). A good primer on RAID arrays is at: www.storagereview.com. Look under Reference, then click on the Hard Disk Performance, Quality and Reliability link and finally on the link to the discussion on RAID. I highly recommend reviewing this before embarking on a RAID setup. Also, plan to backup the RAID. You are introducing another thing that could go wrong to your computer. My computer locks up randomly (haven't figured it out yet) and one time I lost the stripe across the disks, and all my data on the hard drives of the RAID. I since have recovered, but I lost a lot of files. Now I use Drive Image 4.0 to backup the RAID onto a another HD on the primary IDE channel.

 

[Guest]

Check out Paul's Unofficial ABIT KT7 FAQ which includes the KT7-RAID, KT7A and KT7A-RAID motherboards. There is a section which details installation of Windows on the RAID array. It also has a ton of information of BIOS settings and troubleshooting. The link is: http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm

 

[FatBurger]

Great link, dsmike. Thanks

Apple? Macintosh? What are these strange words you speak?