RAID with one HDD?!

[milad_sm]

what does that mean?! does it improve performance anyhow?!
amm...in case it is possible, would i lose the data on the drive, if i use it?
one more...i want to setup RAID 0 (stripping, right?!) using my MSIk266 pro RAID onboard RAID card...anyway...amm...i bought an identical hard drive to the first....i do lost the info on the first drive, right?
and...suppose i want to install an OS, how do i go about it?
i heard i have to take care of the boot record and that it only sits in one HDD...how can i determine that?!
a quick step by step guide would be really really really re....appreciated! :D
thanks people! :p

[muddocktor]

If you set up a RAID array on a drive that you are already using you will zap all your files; it will kill everything.If you want to keep what you have, you need to do a complete backup. After you've saved all your stuff, then you can go ahead and install the second hard drive. Be sure to set each up as master on it's own IDE line on the RAID controller as that will give you better throughput. Then, go ahead and follow your manual's instructions on building the array. I use 64K stripes myself. Anandtech did an article on IDE RAID several months ago and he found that the 64K stripe was the all around best size.

[yngvej]

When you install two disks in a raid you will loose everything, as mentioned by muddoctor.

I am not familar with your motherboard but you must set the BIOS to BOOT from the RAID, as the RAID controllers often are recognised as SCSI controllers you should select this for BOOT.

When installing w2k it promts for drivers that should be loaded before the setup begins. This is the point when you should insert the driver disk for the RAID controller. From this point on Windows handles everything.

For other OS I am not sure of the process.

Yngve

[milad_sm]

oh right...
amm...i see...
well i use an MSI k266pro Raid MB...and it searches to detect array everytime on the bootup process...it's kinda annoying too as it takes about 5 seconds or so...(when i don't have RAID!)
and...ammm...i didn't really get the 64k stripping! is it an option when setting up the RAID?
and...i want the RAID to be used for the video editting...and not the OS....so, i can just set it up right?! should i d/c the OS disk first?!
i have no clue how this looks like! so, a bit of detail would be helpful!
thanks for the replies guys!

[Kryten]

some Abit boards have this raid function as well you can disable it if you dont want use the raid function.
I dont quite think you understand the concept of RAID you cant only do software and not OS when you are using a RAID function it effects the whole drive, the data on the drive remains the same its the access method that changes.

[milad_sm]

kryten, you have made me even more confused!!
are you saying that if i setup the RAID, my software will not be affected??
i want my win2k/xp to be on an IDE drive, while the video editting harddrives be on RAID...how do i go about that?

[XprincoX]

Originally posted by milad_sm
kryten, you have made me even more confused!!
are you saying that if i setup the RAID, my software will not be affected??
i want my win2k/xp to be on an IDE drive, while the video editting harddrives be on RAID...how do i go about that?

no no what kryten was talking about was that u cant run raid without installing a OS on it too. So i u won't be able to install just the editing software on the raids.. Cuz with raid the data format will be totally different from the ide drives ( since in raid-0 half the data is on one drive and the other half on the other). :D

[milad_sm]

/me goes hmmmm.....
but...i only need it to store files on it!!
do i really have to install some OS on the raid??
i have my win2k and adobe premier and other vid editting tools installed on drive 1, and i want drives 2 and 3 be on the raid, to be used as the scratch disk and the video storage...
anyway, if i still have to install an OS on the RAID (drives 2/3), what should it be??? i will not be using it right? i want to use win2k on drive 1...

[XprincoX]

hmm.. well if u only want to store files on the drives why u raid anyways. :D The performance increase is only negible. You probably can get pretty good performance just by making a partition just for the files. But otherwise, win2k would be a good os to use. :p

[FRANK]

I've used a similar setup on my A7V133 with the onboard Promise controller for about a year now.

My setup is as follows, one 20G ATA100 7200 hdd as a boot drive with three partitions containing WIN 98SE, WIN 2K PRO and Mandrake 8 (just a toy) as O-S choices, WIN 2K is my primary O-S. I then set up my RAID 0 array with two 30G ATA 100 7200 hdd's. These are set up with one partition as FAT32 to facilitate both versions of Windows. I've seen a noticable increase in the access time coming off of the RAID array with large graphic files compared to a single ATA 100 7200 drive.

As stated above, WIN 2K is a good choice as far as the O-S. This will give you stability as well as the ability to utilize a large amount af RAM efficiently, I use 728 MBs.

This arrangement gives a lot of flexibility as far as reconfiguring and reformatting the operating systems, and I've found the Promise controller / WD hard drive combination to be reliable for me with no problems to date.

Good Luck!