Raid 0

[snyper1982]

i have been thinking about getting 2 40 gig hard drives and running a raid 0, i was just wondering if it will REALLY improve performance, and by improve i dont mean in benchies, but in actual noticable performance, will it give me any more FPS in my games etc. thanks in advance guys.

[Sonny]

The performance gain of RAID0 is in reading & writting data onto your HDD not FPS in games. Will you feel a difference? Yes you will when setup right. Applications will open quicker, Game maps will load a little bit faster & your whole system just seems to be a little bit more snappier. That's what I got from it. If you want more FPS a good VCard would be a wiser choice.

[snyper1982]

ok, so for my use though, the raid setup wont really be worth it, and i dont think im going to get a much better vidoe card than i have now, lol.

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

You might consider that it will make your swap file faster also.
Two 40gigers would defenately be faster than 1 80giger in anything that has to do with disk io (read/write)and you should notice that like Sonny said, your game maps will load faster.
I love my raid, and can't even fathom ever going back to single drive config's.
BTW, If you do get raid, it is really easy to "clone" your current setup with norton ghost, and if you need you can, PM me and I can explain just how I did mine:cool:

[snyper1982]

well i already have one 40 gig, i was planning on puting it in my old system so my brother could use for school, and updating to 2 new 40 gigs, but i really dont see the point of me spending all that extra money on the raid card, and another drive. i think i will just keep my setup how it is for now, and but some more ram, thats what i am really in need of anyways. but thanks guys.

[Sonny]

Originally posted by DocClock aka MadClocker
You might consider that it will make your swap file faster also.
Two 40gigers would defenately be faster than 1 80giger in anything that has to do with disk io (read/write)and you should notice that like Sonny said, your game maps will load faster.
I love my raid, and can't even fathom ever going back to single drive config's.
BTW, If you do get raid, it is really easy to "clone" your current setup with norton ghost, and if you need you can, PM me and I can explain just how I did mine:cool: I too am extremely happy with RAID no matter what other people say but I have lost my ability to use Norton Ghost. Post here what the secret is so that we can all learn:beer:

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

Ok, Sonny,
What I did, was have the single on a normal ide channel and added the raid card, and the drives, loaded the raid driver onto the single, installed ghost, then I setup the array, formatted, with a 98se boot disk then restarted with the ghost boot disk, executed "ghostpe" and selected disk to disk, and away it went...and when it was ready to restart, I shut down, removed the single and left it on a shelf in the condition it was when yanked out... good thing too because I had a catastrophic failure (dx8.1) and had to reformat, and my backup using adaptec "take Two" wouldn't load back on. and although I lost a ton of stuff, I didn't loose everything.
Remember to format the array before ghosting....if you're just cloning from say 30g to 30g, then you don't need to format, but if the destination drive is bigger, then the extra space might not be seen, so formatting is essential.
The only thing I don't like about ghost is it's so bland...like looking at an Amiga
:burn:

[Sonny]

I was thinking that you might have done it with a third HDD & not on the array:beer: So Ghost only really fails when its on the array, meaning partition to partition, but a separate HDD or CD even should hopefully do the trick. I have Ghost 5.0, Ghost 5.5 PE & Ghost 7 which I think works with NTFS so I will give it a shot as soon as I scrounge up some cash for a third HDD & maybe transfer it to CD. Great tip & thanks a lot:beer:

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

Hmm, Maybe Ghost isn't compatible with XP? I dunno, I ghosted a w98se installation...But I think you have to format the array first...and install Ghost on the drive you are replacing...I think ghost has a utility that allows you to create a bootable cd, but I'm not too sure about ntfs partitions...the ver I used ran in dos mode, and I formated fat32....if you are using mostly games on xp pro, it's probably faster running fat32, because it doesn't have all the permisions, and tokens that ntfs deals with.
Can the newer ghost run in a winnt command prompt?
When it comes down to it, you might just have to back up all your data, and format, and install your os clean, and restore all your data after

[Sonny]

I have only recently shifted to WXP Pro & NTFS, 3 or 4 weeks I think, from W98SE but have not even tried using Ghost since going RAID in either OS. I do have one of those Windows XP OEM Preinstallation kits that will allow me to view & access any of my files via simple gui & command prompt combination in any file system(FAT or NTFS) so maybe I can work it out that way. As for not working with WXP there should be a way to install Ghost through this command prompt since there is a way to do it in DOS before an OS installation so I can maybe have a work around when that issue comes up of not working with XP. I should have a third drive within 4 months:eek: :( :o so it'll be a while before I get to try it out.