partition a new drive

[mrnotu]

I have looked around but can not find what I am looking for. Am needing info on partitioning two new drives to set up in a Raid1 for gaming mostly. And Is there enough perfomance boost to set up a Raid5? Thanks

 

[S0ULphIRE]

For Raid5 you'll need a minimum of 3 drives. Note Raid1 will not gain you any performance boosts, it's strictly for redundancy.
The setup of that raid will depend on whether your motherboard has a raid controller built in (hardware raid) or whether you have to do it through the OS (software raid).

If your motherboard supports it, you should create the array during the boot process. You'll have to enable the raid option in the BIOS (accessed by pressing DEL or F2 usually) then after that you should see a new option during boot that prompts you to press Ctrl+I or something similar to access the RAID setup menu.

If your motherboard doesn't have a built-in raid controller, you'll need to do it through the OS. If this is the case, post up what OS you're running.

 

[Thomas]

With two drives raid 0 will give you a nice performance boost!

 

[mrnotu]

Thanks. My MB supports Raid. Just have to figure out the how to part. I have already ordered two new drives but I am going to get one more for the Raid5 I think. This is the drive I am getting. Western Digital WD1002FAEX 1TB Caviar Black Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200RPM, 64MB, SATA 6Gbs at TigerDirect.com Will be this weekend before I get to work on it.

Oh yeah, What about the partition part? Thanks

 

[MindoverMaster]

You do have currently another drive you are adding? For RAID5, you need 3 drives.

Just use GParted, link to guide in my sig. You need each drive to be partitioned on their own.

There should be another screen after POST that you go into RAID setup after a key stroke. Some BIOS can have a "link" to it.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

You can setup a hardware raid without initialising the disks with a 3rd party program. Just whack 'em in, enable raid in bios, then set them up using the raid config utility which will show up during boot.

 

[mrnotu]

Thanks

 

[mrnotu]

Western Digital WD1002FAEX 1TB Caviar Black Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200RPM, 64MB, SATA 6Gbs at TigerDirect.com On the connections on the back of this drive, the one on the left is for power, the one in the middle is the SATA, but what is the one on the right for? Do I need to have it connected? Thanks

 

[MindoverMaster]

No, it will work fine with power and SATA cord. Don't worry about that. I believe it is used for WD factories to test it. Not sure on that. You'll be fine.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

It's also for stuff like switching from 3gbps to 1.5gbps