Question about raids and how to set up raid

[Remnant]

Well first off had the question of can I set up 2 500 gb drives in raid 0 and then have them backed up by a 1 TB hard drive in raid 1?

And how do i set up raid?

 

[Geneticwarrior]

I'm not sure about having it auto-backup to the 1TB harddrive as a raid 1 setup, but you could probably just use an external harddrive and back it up to that every so often. Only have experience setting up raid 0's myself. Never had a drive fail so I don't usually ever backup. Then again I only have games on my PC so it's no biggie if a drive fails.

 

[sammybaines]

Someone correct me if i'm wrong but Raid 0 is a data striping whilst Raid 1 is data striping with parity back up. So if you set up the two 500gb in Raid 0 they will give you 1TB of space which your data will be split across the two drives. If you then set-up the 1TB drive in Raid 1 it would provide you with 500GB of space and a parity (Backup) of 500GB for everything on the 1TB drive. So in effect it might not be worthwhile for what you want to achieve.

Also your Raid controller on your motherboard may only be able to control a single raid set-up but im not sure on this.

The best thing to do for your set-up would be to add all the drives in one raid 1 set-up to give you data striping on 1TB of space and a back up on the other 1TB but the issue is with 500GB and 1TB drive mixture the sizes will be reduced down to the 500GB drive specifications.

 

[MyGodAL3X]

If you buy a RAID card that can support RAID 0+1 it is feasible.
It might be a bit iffy but it should work no problem, but you will need an additional RAID card because motherboard do not often support RAID 0+1.
And it would work the way you are thinking, the 2x 500GB drives would make a 1TB space and then that can be in RAID 1 configuration with the 1TB drive.
You would set that up without any data on the drive, since it will erase everything, and you would, once you have the card, boot into the card (there should be an option during boot) and then tell the card what to do. Make sure to read the RAID card manual and make sure to get one that supports RAID 0+1

 

[Night Fox]

Raid 1 does not have anything to do with a parity. It simply mirrors the other drive. Also, when a drive says it's 500gb or 1tb, it usually ends up being a little less than that due to formatting, etc. This is why they recommend the same drives in raid 1 because the actual amount of two 500gb drives in raid 0 could be more than the actual amount of the 1tb drive.

You can setup the 500gb drives in raid 0, then set the new "single" drive with the 1tb drive in raid 1...but just be warned that the sizes may be different.

 

[Remnant]

Awesome answers ok. so I'm gonna set up the raid 0 so just open up bios and there should be an option somewhere? and to make sure, doing this erases the HDDs so I should back up the stuff I want?

 

[MyGodAL3X]

yes you should back up everything, but does your motherboard support the RAIDs you want?

 

[Remnant]

Newegg.com - MSI 760GM-P35 AM3 AMD 760G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

says:
SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/JBOD

 

[MyGodAL3X]

Perfect man, have fun setting it up. Check your manual if you cant find the RAID in the BIOS. It will tell you what to do.