Raptor upgrade confusion

Well, I'm new to this whole SATA RAID thing, so to learn more, the first thing I did was read the heck out of the Forums. Unfortunately, I seem to have become more confused than less. For some reason, I can't totally wrap my head around this.

Instead of posting the usual "How do I do this?" thing, I thought I would instead post my scenario and what I hope to try and do---then have you knowledgables tell me if I'm nuts or on track. Crack or track?

Scenario:
I have had 2 WD PATA Caviar drives (here) for a few years now. The Master I use for XP and general files, the Slave I use for Games and backups of document data.
I am upgrading my CPU to a lovely 4000+ San Diego and I'm thinking that my main bottleneck will now be my harddrives. So, I also want to upgrade to 2 Raptors.

How am I going to do this (Subtitled: Am I nuts)?

-Purchase 2 74gb Raptors
-Install XP on 1 with drivers as well
-Get 2nd driver to be recognized by XP
-Set them both up to run in RAID 0 (if I have 2 SATA drives I HAVE to use a RAID setup, yes?)
-Use Acronis True Image to make a copy of my old PATA drives and install that image to the new drives
-Keep 1 of my old PATA drives for backup storage

Does this even make sense? I still haven't figured out, of course, just exactly HOW I'm doing all theses steps, but right now I just want to see if I'm on the right track...or on Crack.

Thanks in advance to all the members that keep these great Forums alive and helpful for folks like me!

-Purchase 2 74gb Raptors

Click to expand...

Sure.

-Install XP on 1 with drivers as well

Click to expand...

If you want to set up a RAID, you need to do that before installing your OS.

-Get 2nd driver to be recognized by XP

Click to expand...

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here.

-Set them both up to run in RAID 0

Click to expand...

If you decide you need RAID 0, you have to stripe the disks (setup RAID 0, that is) before you put anything on the array.

(if I have 2 SATA drives I HAVE to use a RAID setup, yes?)

Click to expand...

Absolutely not. RAID is a Redundant Array of Independant (or Inexpensive, depending on who you ask) Disks, and has nothing whatsoever to do with SATA, other than the fact that SATA disks, like any other disks, can be used to make a RAID.

-Use Acronis True Image to make a copy of my old PATA drives and install that image to the new drives

Click to expand...

Something along these lines is probably a good idea.

-Keep 1 of my old PATA drives for backup storage

Click to expand...

Sure.

Does this even make sense? I still haven't figured out, of course, just exactly HOW I'm doing all theses steps, but right now I just want to see if I'm on the right track...or on Crack.

Click to expand...

If I were you, I would take these steps:
-Decide what kind of storage setup you require
-Buy disks appropriate for your desired setup
-If that happens to be a pair of Raptors and you need RAID 0, then:
--Install them in the machine
--Set them up in RAID 0
--Install an OS on them (fresh, or from an image)
-Keep old drives around

I don't know exactly what your requirements are, of course, but I would suggest the new 150GB Raptor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136012

$281 is a pretty fair deal, I think. Of course, if you buy that drive, you won't have to do much more than plug it in. Not that RAID 0 is very complicated, but you can't get much easier than plug and go.

Thanks Galt for the response. Great advice, I will look into it. I think my biggest stumbling block in understanding is RAID vs SATA. I thought you needed to do a RAID configuration if you were using 2 SATA drives.
What's the advantage of doing a RAID setup, then? Does it somehow increase the speed of your drives?

cmat said:

Thanks Galt for the response. Great advice, I will look into it. I think my biggest stumbling block in understanding is RAID vs SATA. I thought you needed to do a RAID configuration if you were using 2 SATA drives.
What's the advantage of doing a RAID setup, then? Does it somehow increase the speed of your drives?

Click to expand...

okay theres many types of raid described in the raid sticky... mainly what you will be using i bet is RAID0.

Lamens terms RAID0 is, half data on one drive, half on the other = half the time to seek.

Raid can also be run on IDE, just needs to be supported by the motherboard or daughterboard.

No you could have 50 million drives and you don't need raid, but if you can afford that many drives might as well go with the speed as well.

Yes RAID can be extremely fast, but it also ups the chance of drives failing, or so people say. The common saying is more risk more speed, but the chance of them failing as time goes on is less and less, just like pc's are pretty much designed to run 24/7

Anymore questions? Feel free to ask, im still learning about RAID like you but its pretty simple and not taking long to get under my belt.

You don't have to use RAID with two SATA drives any more than you have to use RAID with two PATA drives. It's completely optional.

I think my biggest stumbling block in understanding is RAID vs SATA. I thought you needed to do a RAID configuration if you were using 2 SATA drives.

Click to expand...

SATA is just another drive interface. RAID is more or less a way of managing the drives in a system. Check out these links if you're interested:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

What's the advantage of doing a RAID setup, then? Does it somehow increase the speed of your drives?

Click to expand...

There are tradeoffs for every "level" (that's what we call the types) of RAID. Don't let anybody tell you that there's one 'best RAID'. In a nutshell:

-RAID 0 [Striping]:
With n drives, each drive only needs to read or write 1/n of a given file. This results in a performance increase. However, with data striped across all the drives in the array, if any drive dies, all of the data is destroyed. So, the tradeoff is that there's an increased chance that you'll lose your data. It's not that RAID 0 is somehow more susceptible to data loss, as some people seem to think. Simply put, two drives with a controller will experience a failure sooner than a single drive by itself, and any failure results in total loss of data. RAID 0 is not literally a level of RAID (because it lacks redundancy, the R in RAID), so the "RAID 0" name makes sense.

-RAID 1 [Mirroring]:
With n disks (of the same size), you'll have a usable array of only n/2 disks capacity (so, two 300GB drives are needed for a 300GB array). However, the 'other' capacity is used to mirror the usable array, so if a drive dies, you're still online. The tradeoff here is that you pay twice as much for hard drives, but you get the redundancy. RAID 1 is not really about performance in the traditional sense.

-RAID 5, 6 [Parity]:
Are probably too sophisticated for this application. They typically require some serious hardware, although some newer onboard controllers can handle it, albeit with a tremendous performance decrease.

-RAID 10 [Stripe of Mirrors]:
Requires at least 4 drives. Drives 1 and 2 are mirrored, call them A. Drives 3 and 4 are mirrored, call them B. A and B are then striped, just as if the were two drives in RAID 0. This gets you the performance of RAID 0, along with the redundancy of RAID 1 (or better). The tradeoff, of course, is that you still lose half your capacity to mirroring, and the 4 drive minimum scares some people off.

I would really encourage you to read a few links on RAID before you decide what's best for you. If there's anything further you want to know about, please do ask.

Thanks everyone for the great posts and advice. Your comments make this much easier to understand and I think I get it. I'll do some more reading and researching, although I think I will probably get that nice 150GB Raptor and then use one of my current drives for backups. Then, once I get a bit more comfortable with RAID, I might start exploring that route.

Really, thanks a ton for all this great help!