Raid 0 Newbie Setup Questions

AngelicPenguin · Jan 7, 2009

I recently bought two 1 TB samsung spindlepoint's that I want to setup as RAID 0 for games (my OS will remain on my old hard drive.)

I have a GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4 and it has two onboard RAID controllers. A gigabyte one and an Intel ICH9R. Does it matter which one I use?

Since I don't need to load an OS on it, do I just plug these two drives in to whichever one I pick and go into the BIOS to enable the RAID options and windows XP will just see it as one drive? Will there be a problem with a 2 Gig drive in XP w/ SP2?

Isn't there also an option as to what size the controller uses to determine how to break files up or something like that (I remember reading about it a while back.)

Thanks for any help!
Matthew

AngelicPenguin · Jan 8, 2009

If anyone is curious, I found this response on Expert's Exchange:

The Intel SATA is build into the chipset so that it connects without using the PCI bus. This means it does not share bandwidth with anything else on the PCI bus. In general this will mean better performance.

The Gigabyte controller is more or less equivalent to using a addon card. It uses the PCI bus and shares that with other devices - onboard and anything you put in slots. Check page 8 in the manual for a schematic which shows how things are interconnected on the board.

The reason the Gigabyte controller is included is the the Intel chipset does not support non-serial drives. So they add a multifunction disk controller to support older IDE drives and optical drives.

The Intel controller is also more generic. You can get ICH8R support from any number of manufacturers who make Intel chipset boards. So board replacement is not as much of an issue down the road. You would likely be able to transfer the array to a new board.

mbentley · Jan 8, 2009

just to make sure, did you found where to set the block size when you created the array? or have you not created the array yet?

once you enable raid in the system bios, you should get a screen that pops up after the POST for the raid bios where you manage your arrays.

AngelicPenguin · Jan 8, 2009

No I haven't actually set it up yet. How do you know what's a good block size?

mbentley · Jan 8, 2009

AngelicPenguin said:
No I haven't actually set it up yet. How do you know what's a good block size?

basically it depends on what size the files are that you are going to be storing. if you have a large number of very small files, a smaller block size would be more efficient. if you have large files, it is more efficient to have a larger block size.

for example, say you have a block size of 4 KB. if you have a file that is 2 KB in size, it will be placed on a 4 KB block wasting 2 KB of space that can't be used. if you set your block size larger, say 32 KB, and you have the same 2 KB file, you are wasting 30 KB of space that can't be used.

personally i just use the default block size that is given. it usually depends on the software as to what the default is.

AngelicPenguin · Jan 8, 2009

Ahh makes sense. Are there drivers to install in windows or does this all happen in the BIOS?

mbentley · Jan 8, 2009

AngelicPenguin said:
Ahh makes sense. Are there drivers to install in windows or does this all happen in the BIOS?

you will define the raid array in the raid bios (separate from the system bios). once you create the array, you will still need to format the array when in windows.

and yes, you will probably need to install drivers if you are activating the onboard raid for the first time. since you are keeping windows on your other hard drive, just boot up windows and it should detect the new raid controller and the array and install the drivers automatically, especially with vista. with windows xp, you might need the motherboard cd but it might be able to get the drivers from the web automatically.

AngelicPenguin · Jan 8, 2009

Cool! I hope to try it tonight. I've read the performance benefits aren't that great, but I guess it won't hurt. It's just for games as I don't wanna reload the OS at this point.

mbentley · Jan 8, 2009

AngelicPenguin said:
Cool! I hope to try it tonight. I've read the performance benefits aren't that great, but I guess it won't hurt. It's just for games as I don't wanna reload the OS at this point.

personally, i find that having my system running on a raid 0 array is noticeably faster but i can understand you not wanting to reinstall your os.

Mathis · Jan 8, 2009

If you need anymore help, look at the mobo user manual, because I know my board (not much different than yours) had some pretty good step-by-step instuctions that I used to do RAID 0 for the first time.

AngelicPenguin · Jan 8, 2009

but i can understand you not wanting to reinstall your os

It also has a lot to do with having two drives that could now fail...if my gaming drive fails, it wouldn't take long to be back up. Reinstalling the OS doesn't take THAT long, I just hate the idea of being twice as likely for a failure, and I can't really justify buying two more of these drives for redundancy.

look at the mobo user manual,

I'll definitely do that!

Raid 0 Newbie Setup Questions

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mbentley

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