Raid?

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osubuckeyes

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This might be a newbie question or not i dont know, anyways

Having just purchased an ASUS P5AD2 premium MoBo, they talk about "triple RAID systems" and Hi-Speed RAID systems

What is a RAID, and what are the pros/cons
 
Power, if you cant answer his question, then dont post. Raid comes in various forums, such as raid0 and raid1. Which are the most popular and widely used. Raid0 for example increase's data utilization, in simple terms your HDD can deliver data much quicker. Raid0/1 needs at least 2 HDD for this process to take effect. Raid0 uses 2 HDD as one. It divide's data in half, each HDD shares one half. Then when the time comes, each HDD loads each part of data togather. So in theory, you have 2 HDD working togather sharing work. Raid0 is very usefull. Now Raid1 needs 2 HDD as well. When raid1 is apply'ed you only get the storage of one of the excisting HDD. Because the second is a back up. Raid1 copys everything writing on the the prime drive, and copy's it to the second. So if that drive fail's, you have all your original data stored onto your back up.
 
You actually got it backwards, a RAID array is a configuration of more than one drive that is immune to data loss, should a drive fail in the array.

A RAID 0 is not actually a true RAID as it is not fault tolerant.
 
I know raid0 is a laibility of course. I was just giving him a quick sum of what Raid0 and Raid1 do. I made a few typo's that i fixed, typing to quick. Maybe thats why you were confused.
 
I was actually refering to the guy above ya, you replied while I was replying so I hadn't even seen it. ;)
 
There's also software RAID, and the above mentioned hardware RAID.There's also many more forms other than 0 or 1.

RAID=redundant array of inexpensive drives

Basically it allows you to group some drives together and make them either act as one, or provide "striping" or complete backup of the data so if a drive fails you dont lose anything.By making them work together in parallel like raid 0 you theoretically gain some speed in file transfers.By using other schemes you make it so your data is more secure and recoverable if a drive fails and theoretically faster file transfers.Raid 0 is becoming popular with gamers due to the increased file transfer speed(see above answers), but in the server world you'll all kinds of combos up raid 5.It isnt always done with hardware either, its easily done with software too.It can also be done with a variety of drives and cabling setups, teh advantage is you dont have to have identical drives with some of the setups, and its cheaper than using an expensive commercial solution.
 
Not having identical drives is kind of pointless though since the entire array will always be as slow as its weakest link so to speak.
 
There are ways around that though, for example in a large array with one different drive thats bigger you can partition it off to make it match the others and use that space for something else.You can even use a combo of scsi and IDE, lots and lots of posibilities there.A block device is a block device, doesnt matter what it is physically or even what filesystem it has on it, thats the beauty of RAID.
 
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