To RAID or not to RAID!?

[DIsorder39]

So I have recently been reading up on RAID since I have never used it in any of my systems previously and I was wondering if I should start. I currently have 2 Seagate Barracuda 250gb 16mb 7200.10 with a EVGA 780i Mobo. Not sure if any other systems specs would help determine if I should RAID or not. I am not so worried about having all my data backed redundantly, more so looking for performance increase if any with load times and such. Not sure if the size of the drives and the fact that they are less than 500gb may mean that I am better off just keeping them as 2 seperate drives. Please help! Thanks!

[amd64crazy07]

TO RAID!!! i went from 32 mb/s to 163 mb/s on RAID 0.. running that same hdd so it runs as one 463gb drive with more transfer power.

as far as data loss goes... i just look at it as if it were really one drive... If that "one" drive where to fail anyways...id still be fubared.

[DIsorder39]

Alright - well that seems to be exactly the kind of answer I was looking for - now.. how the hell do I set it up to be raid 0? I have an EVGA 780i MOBO and as you know both those HDDs are SATA, do I just do it in bios or do I need to get a PCI card or something or what? Sorry, Im a nub when it comes to this. Thanks!

Edit: Also if I have 2 older 250gb Seagate Barracuda IDE drives at 7200.08 is there anyway I could use them in my system as just pure storage? Or perhaps back up drives?

[Xris]

Go into your BIOS
Look for something like "onboard devices" and "sata preferences"
Check an option that says enable RAID
Enable RAID on the two SATA ports you have the drives on
Save and Reboot
On reboot you'll see a new option somewhere that says press F10 or some such button to change your RAID settings
Press F10 or some such button
Set up RAID 0 array on your drives
You're done

That's at least how it's done on my Asus P5N-T Deluxe which is a 780i. I'm sure yours is similar if not the same.

[amd64crazy07]

Are you looking to reformat?? You may need to copy the raid drivers to a floppy (XP) or a flash drive/floppy (Vista)

(Basically what Xris stated)

What I did was change the setting in bios from ide to raid..

then when you boot you will see a flashing alert saying no array is set up press... ctrl F or so... set it up there... fairly simple.

restart and install windows its pretty straight foward and this was my first try at it myself.

[DIsorder39]

Well at this point it is a brand new computer - I the parts are sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to buy an OS so I can build it. So that being said would I want to go into BIOS and make it raid config before I install my OS? And if I wasnt planning on putting a floppy drive in it so if I wanna use XP I pretty much have to go out and get one for if nothing else just this purpose? Guess Ill have to build it with no OS and take a look at the bios. Thanks again!

[aoch88]

Make use of technology - RAID0 it!