What is RAID ???

[SGT BLADE]

Can any1 help me, what is this RAID contoller all about? When i build my next next AMD Thunderbird based system should I get a M/B with RAID? Some1 explain it to me simply please.

[Calzor Suzay]

Raid stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks

Basically theres loads of forms of RAID via software/hardware etc but I assume your talking about the KT7 board with the rais feature, this controller is able to handle:-

RAID 0
Description/Pro
This stripes two disks as one so the OS sees one big HD, advantage is it can read and write simultaneously to both drives so speeding throuput but NOT access times and the the advantage can only realy be seen when dealing with large files such as video editing etc but some say it speeds thing up in general, in theory it should in practise, fecks knows never tried and most reviews I've read have it slighty faster.

Con
Costs more for the board, requires two HD's of the same size and preferably model, if one HD dies you loose both
RAID 1
Description/Pro
Better known as disk mirroring, basically everything on disk 0 is also written to disk 1 at the same time so if disk 0 dies disk 1 steps in and you loose no data.

Con
Costs more for the board, requires two HD's of the same size and preferably model and no performance increase, total storage is only the size of one drive too.
RAID 0+1
Description/Pro
Basicaly everything above, you have 4 HD's of which two run RAID 0 and the other two RAID 1, supposed performance increase plus data integrity.

Con
Costs feck loads for four HD's and in a home enviroment is way over the top, unless of course you have crap loads of money and then go buy a proper RAID controller and run RAID 5 :E


Bottom line for home use you'll see negligable speed increase in everyday use on RAID 0 unless your into heavy video/sound editing, but if you have the board anyway and two smaller HD's like the IBM 75gxp 15gb's add up in cost to a drive like the 30gb model you was going to buy anyway for the same price then it might be a worthwhile option.

Didn't help much did I :naughty:

[[HLnC]Jay-Dee]

same old questions :cry:
same old answers :E

click search at the top
this question pops up every few weeks

or see
http://forums.gameplay.com/showthread.php?threadid=182858

http://forums.gameplay.com/showthread.php?threadid=180664

[SGT BLADE]

Thanks for the info Calzor, moocho grazis (or something)
And J-D, thanks for your input also, good to see there are still some people out there who can read past the first thread page!

Thanks again