RAID array help

[MrT*]

Hey everyone. I'm new here and looking for some help. I have a couple of questions about RAID arrays and I figured you guys could help me out. I want to set up a RAID 0 array on my comp(for gaming), but I don't really know what setup would work best. 2 HDD's at 10000 RPM or 3 or more HDD's at 7200 RPM? It seems to me that the popular setup is 2 at 10000. Could someone shed some light on this? Secondly, I don't know what type of controller to get. I have an Intel 865GLC mobo, and Intel's website says that the mobo "supports RAID technology", but I don't exactly know what that means. Are there any previous post, websites or books that someone can refer me to for answers. I'm sorry to ask such a simple question, but I'm new to upgrading comp's and I'm looking for some help. Thanks

 

[ravin]

I would go with 10000 rpm. Mainly because it just seems more logical, I mean faster harddrives = faster speed??? I would think so. RAID technology is actually rather old, so most motherboards support it now. Most motherboards come with their own software or built-in RAID arrays/software.

 

[ravin]

Oh and welcome to the Forums!

 

[aj2003]

I would go with 3 120gig seagate drives. Ive got 2 in raid0 and sis sandra shows me that the difference in transfer speed between mine and 2 10000 raptors is only 2mb/s. so i would of though 3 of these drives would easily out perform the 2 raptors

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Your motherboard should have came with a floppy disc with a special Raid driver on it, In order to setup the drives to be used with raid you will need to install the driver to these drives befor you format them.... I think... Ive never had the chance to work with raid/sata

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

I would go with 3 120gig seagate drives. Ive got 2 in raid0 and sis sandra shows me that the difference in transfer speed between mine and 2 10000 raptors is only 2mb/s. so i would of though 3 of these drives would easily out perform the 2 raptors

When you have 3 of the drives, you are most likely running them in Raid 5 which is basicly a combination of Raid 1 and 0. Something like that, I dont know much about raid

 

[Chankama]

When you have 3 of the drives, you are most likely running them in Raid 5 which is basicly a combination of Raid 1 and 0. Something like that, I dont know much about raid

No man. Raid 5 is a configuration where you have a "parity disk". This is less secure than Raid 1 but has room for more capacity. For example, in Raid 1, if you use 5x120gb disks, ur total capcity will be 120Gb since all disks will contain the redundant information. In Raid 5, 5x120Gb will give you 480Gb (120x4). The last drive is a parity disk. If one disk fails, you can retrieve it by XORing the other 3 disks and the parity disk. If 2 disks fail simultaneously, with Raid 1 you are good. With Raid 5 u are screwed!.. At least it seems that way to me.

Parity disk (disk N) = disk1 XOR disk2 XOR ... XOR .. disk N-1

So every write would entail you to write to the parity disk. 1 read of the current contents of disk X, compare the diffs, and 1 write to the parity disk, and of course 1 write to the disk X itself. At least, that's the best algorithm I can think of. If anyone can do better, post away!

As for the original question, it's difficult to say without benchmarks. Using 1) 3 drives simultaneously vs 2) using 2 faster drives. Certainly, 3 is better than 2, but the 2 are faster...