Setting up raid

[Stan_Lite]

Since I'm no longer folding for now, I will only be using the one PC so I decided to make it as fast as possible. As you may have seen from another thread, I have got up to 5.9s in all of the Vista experience score categories except hard drive. My intention was to get two Raptors running in Raid0 but have decided that this is going to be too pricey for the minuscule gain I will get.

The new plan is to take the 320Gb Seagate Barracuda (7200.10) from the E6600 rig which I won't be using for now and getting another one the same (arriving tomorrow - along with my new sound card) and running them in Raid0.

I want to make sure I get this right first time as I don't want to be fannying about for days trying to get it to work.

From what I can gather from a bit of Googling, what I have to do is:
Set the raid options as required in the BIOS and install the Raid drivers (downloaded from Asus and put onto USB flash) when prompted during the Vista install.

Is it really as simple as that or am I missing something obvious?

Stan :)

[Daz]

Missing a step. Enable the RAID options in the BIOS to ensure your disks are treated as devices belonging to your RAID controller. You should be prompted after your initial POST to press a key or combination to enter RAID configuration/whatever, where you'll create your '0' array (how you do that will vary greatly depending on the controller). After you've done that, boot into Vista setup and load drivers (if needed) after which you should see your single RAID device, rather than separate disks. Windows should not 'see' the actual disks, only the array presented by your controller.

[Stan_Lite]

Ah, cheers Daz - I had a feeling I was missing something.

Apparently Vista has built in Raid drivers but I thought it might be better to use the proprietary drivers for my motherboard.

Stan :)

[Daz]

Try the built in ones first, they'll be WHQL certified. If it works, and it aint broke....

Certainly what I've done with mine anyway :)

[Stan_Lite]

I'll do that then - no point asking for advice and ignoring it.

Appreciate the help dude.

Stan :)

[Mark]

I can testify that the Seagates work pretty darn well in RAID, though I'm using RAID1. I could go with RAID0 but with nearly 1TB in that machine I'm not short on space. :)

[Daz]

Ah, but could you do with the bandwidth?

[Mark]

I used to have a bandwidth issue with the controller that resulted in read speeds on RAID1 being slower than a single disk but I'm not sure if that was the (somewhat expensive) PCI controller or the motherboard (the latter since upgraded). However, most stuff from that box goes over the LAN so I'd also have to buy a GbE switch to do it justice (though they're not that expensive these days).

In short, probably not. :)

[Dr. Z]

I have two 320Gb seagate drives in raid0. Not that fast really, I was a little disappointed in all honesty. Faster than the drives on their own but because its all done on the PCI bus, in LAN terms it offers no real world advantage but adds an extra layer to go wrong.

I'm actually going to buy another 500Gb drive as soon as funds allow and break the raid0 down.

On a main machine I can certainly see the attraction. Seriously fast for scratch disks / gaming etc etc.

[Stan_Lite]

On a main machine I can certainly see the attraction. Seriously fast for scratch disks / gaming etc etc.

This is my main gaming rig so I'm hoping the extra speed will make gameplay that little bit smoother and quicker - I understand that the raid0 helps games to load much faster than with a single disk.

Stan :)

[Daz]

For gaming, yeah, it'll be your loading times. Most people have at least 2GB in their gaming rigs these days, and with a single disk it'll take a few more seconds to fill. I stripe because I can run more VM's concurrently - and it's still my bottle neck on my 3GHz Woodcrest (the server C2D) Xeon at work.