RAID 0

[DVDDave]

anyone know where i can find guides on how to setup RAID 0?? i know i need two matching drives. is the setup done in BIOS or windows?? i plan on using two Seagate 160gig Barracuda SATA drives.

thanks---dave

[ViRaL1]

If you have a RAID controller, it's better to set it up in the RAID BIOS (RAID 0 / Striping). If you don't have a RAID controller, you can set up a stripe set in Windows (NT / 2000 / XP) in Disk Management.

[xxgriff]

there are software and hardware arrays. as ViRaL1
said, if you have a controller (either on your motherboard, or add on card) then you enter the BIOS of the controller. choose your drives, and select the type of array you wish to use. for RAID0 you will need to partition, and format the array.

make sure your RAID controller is installed and all drivers are installed.

setting up a hardware array:
http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/RAID.htm

setting up a software array is accomplished through your OS (if your OS supports) Linux, Win2k/xp do. depending on your controller, the array may or may not be bootable, you should look to the manucturers web site for this info. moth motherboard manufacturers will use either Promise or Highpoint. often the Controllers onboard do not have the same options that add-on cards do (BIOS limitations).

[DVDDave]

thanks for that link xxgriff!!!! i am using an ABIT ICG-7MAXII, the controller specs are below.

2nd Serial ATA RAID
- 2 channel Serial ATA 150MB/s data transfer rate with RAID function (0) via South Bridge
- 2 channel Serial ATA 150MB/s data transfer rate with RAID function (0/1) via Silicon Image PCI Chip

sould i use the southbridge or the silicon image controller?? the southbridge has only a RAID 0 option and the Silicon Image has RAID 0/1. i only plan on using RAID 0 at the moment to boost speed.

thanks for all the responses so far!!!!!

DAVE

[xxgriff]

You may want to experiement with the setup, and test the speed, and reliability of your system. also, keep in mind that just because you are not planning on using RAID1 (mirroring) now, you may want to later. it is quite useful to have a RAID0+1 incase of drive failure.

I use my RAID for data, and therefore have a seperate drive for my OS and boot. My array is there for saving and editing audio and video because of performance and space.

do you have another drive or is your RAID array the only disk you will be using?

looking at your system specs, i (will) assume you purchased another hard drive 9maybe to my error, but i would use:
2 channel Serial ATA 150MB/s data transfer rate with RAID function (0/1) via Silicon Image PCI Chip
it gives you more options and flexability.

[DVDDave]

i plan on only using two identical disks to start. i am not too concerned with data backup at the moment. i just want to see some speed increase. i guess i will find out how it works when my drive gets here from newegg.

is RAID 0 + 1 using 2 disks for speed and one for backup???? if so, can the two be SATA and the third IDE????

[makntraks]

If I may toss in my $0.02...
All this talk of RAID, etc got me going a while back but after all my research I figured it wasn't worth the trouble.. In general, and I said in GENERAL, RAID has no significant use for a home setup...
As for gaining a speed - bah...
I relate it all to "blinks of an eye"

makntraks

[xxgriff]

the decision to use a RAID array is subjective. for general (home) use, that is to say word processing, browsing or video games, you will not "see" or notice any performance increase over the normal IDE use. it can also be argued that RAID0 is not a "true" RAID, in that there is no fault tolerence. meaning if one drive fails, the array is useless, and data is lost. that being said, RAID0 can be beneficial when the need for highbandwidth is required. video edit, processing are good examples that are now common to PC/home users. more often Servers benefit from the use of RAID, as bandwidth as well as uptime are equally important (RAID 3/5/10 etc)

RAID0+1 mirrors the RAID0. another array, of equal capacity is needed, and duplicates all writes to your RAID0 with the idea that if a drive fails you can rebuild the array from the mirror. there are many other variations for RAID, most other types of arrays are more frequently used in SCSI arrays, because of SCSI design and archetecture(ability to use multiple devices on a SCSI channel)

(S)ATA channel 0 --------disk1-----disk2 (stripe)
-------------------------------|----------|----------------
(S) TA channel 1 --------disk1-----disk2 (stripe)

the mirror effectively hidden, and all writes/data from the RAID0 is duplicated on the RAID1. so if disk 1 on channel 0 fails, you can replace the drive, and rebuild the array, or you can swap disk 1 from channel 1, or the whole mirrored array.
you can see some visuals that will help explain here:
http://www.sohoconsult.ch/raid/raid.html

[DVDDave]

very interesting stuff. when i go to do this, i will go into BIOS and activate the silicon image controller, set to raid 0 and all. when that is all set, do i just boot from the XP CD and install as usual?? i know i have to put a floppy in and press F6 and all. is there more to it??

[xxgriff]

you will need the RAID controller drivers on a floppy, extract them from your CD (ABIT) or you can DL them here:
ftp://ftp.abit.com.tw/pub/download/drivers/sata/silicon/floppy/disk133.exe

you will need the drivers for the device you will be using, and the file named Txtsetup.oem on a floppy.

once you have physically connected the drives, boot, and enter your BIOS setup,enable the RAID function on the device you choose (Southbridge or Silicon Image PCI Chip. for silicon image PCI SATA use SATA3 and SATA4, you can either disable the other controller (southbridge/Intel) or leave enabled. check your settings to make sure everything is as you want- save and exit. when you re-boot, your PCI RAID will detect your drives, and you should be given instructions on how to enter RAID utility (for my controller it is Ctrl+F), and a menu is given. setup, define etc... i am unfamiliar with what your menu looks like, but they are all variations on the same theme. slect your drives, and choose to make a stripe. save and exit.

after re-booting (from your XP cd) press F6 and provide the floppy with your PCI RAID controller drivers when asked. windows will look for disks/partitions to install. choose your array, and let windows format the array (i use NTFS) you can select how much to allocate in size at this point, and let windows format. you will be asked a couple times to "ok" the choice to format.

Keep in mind that the RAID controller BIOS is located within your motherboards BIOS/EEPROM, and flashing to a new BIOS that includes a update for your RAID controller is VERY risky- you can lose the array, and have to start over if the RAID BIOS is changed. so don't fix it if it's not broke

[rallynavvie]

I never noticed any better performance on any of my video or dcc apps when I had a RAID 0 volume set up over the single drives, or if there was a difference it was not notable enough to tolerate the stripe corruption that lost me everything on that volume when it went. I do RAID on my server box now but it's on SCSI hosts and it's nested to protect everything.

[DVDDave]

xxgriff--thanks for all the help. your last post was an excellent, short guide. i will try all this tomorrow when my second drive shows up.

thanks again---dave

[Will Hay]

If I may toss in my $0.02...
All this talk of RAID, etc got me going a while back but after all my research I figured it wasn't worth the trouble.. In general, and I said in GENERAL, RAID has no significant use for a home setup...
As for gaining a speed - bah...
I relate it all to "blinks of an eye"

makntraks

I haven't read the entire thread as I can't be bothered but don't wish to enter nor inflame a possible argument on the benefits of RAID 0, but suffice to say I too did extensive testing with a card and two 80gb 8mb Maxtor D740X's with an ATI Radeon and gained no benefit in minimising capture loss than I did when captured individually to each drive.
I decided to split and use one for storage and the other for capture; with a low-level (quick) format before each capture.
Present company excluded many people think you can create a RAID 0 with double the space of each individual drive and then fill it with shite, move/delete/paste all thefucking time and then capture to it; all without problems.
Just my thoughts, take them as you will and I know, I can't beleive I'm agreeing with maknatracks either, the twat
Will

[makntraks]

If I may toss in my $0.02...
All this talk of RAID, etc got me going a while back but after all my research I figured it wasn't worth the trouble.. In general, and I said in GENERAL, RAID has no significant use for a home setup...
As for gaining a speed - bah...
I relate it all to "blinks of an eye"

makntraks

I haven't read the entire thread as I can't be bothered but don't wish to enter nor inflame a possible argument on the benefits of RAID 0, but suffice to say I too did extensive testing with a card and two 80gb 8mb Maxtor D740X's with an ATI Radeon and gained no benefit in minimising capture loss than I did when captured individually to each drive.
I decided to split and use one for storage and the other for capture; with a low-level (quick) format before each capture.
Present company excluded many people think you can create a RAID 0 with double the space of each individual drive and then fill it with shite, move/delete/paste all thefucking time and then capture to it; all without problems.
Just my thoughts, take them as you will and I know, I can't beleive I'm agreeing with maknatracks either, the twat
Will

Hahahahahahahahaha.... Will Hay, agreeing with me...
Who'da thunk????

makntraks

p.s. I found your comments soo funnay, I popped a vein trying to come up with something that could top it

[DVDDave]

will hay, you are tooo funny. i know i will not be gaining any storage space, i just want to experiment with a RIAD 0 setup and see if i notice any gains in performance. i will be using 2 120 gig SATA drives. if i find no increased speed, i then may try RAID 1, or just use the second drive like you do.

and that was all the cents i have right now

[xxgriff]

glad it was helpful. your motherboard manual, can fill in any blanks, so keep it close when your new drive arrives.

[DVDDave]

i have been reading the MOBO manual. all seems pretty easy after several reads of the manual. it is just intimidating the first time. when i got my first SATA drive, all the reviews at newegg.com intimidated me because of all the people who forgot to put the floppy in and hit F6 and thought they had a bad drive or MOBO. my first time installing a SATA drive went flawless and i hope the same goes tomorrow when i do the RAID 0!!!!!!!!

thanks again---dave

[Will Hay]

will hay, you are tooo funny. i know i will not be gaining any storage space, i just want to experiment with a RIAD 0 setup and see if i notice any gains in performance. i will be using 2 120 gig SATA drives. if i find no increased speed, i then may try RAID 1, or just use the second drive like you do.

You're right to research yourself of course, there's nothing like personal opinion bourne from hours of relentless failure/banging your head against your keyboard
I'd be interested to know of your decision/outcome, so please post back
....and don't forget the pitfall of RAID 0, if one drive goes, you lose everything
I know this is true of a single drive but you have two single drives, and the chances of two failing, hell, the chances of one failing are remote but it's worth noting.
Whatever you decide will be the right choice; good luck.
Will

[skeg64]

Hey,
I've got practically the same setup as you're planning (check my specs). It's been running smoothly for about 6 months now. Installation was very easy.
At the moment I've had the PC on for about a week straight and it's happily humming along, downloading stuff. My ISP must be pissed about my week long connection (I'm on dialup w/unlimited hours).
I used the southbridge controller, I'm not sure if you can boot from the Silicon Image one?
I am worried about disk failure and keep backups of nearly everything. I'm looking at doing one of the other RAID configurations where you can have 3 discs, with the capacity of 2, and if one dies you don't lose any data. RAID 5 or something. But that will be in the future when I upgrade.
The seagates are reliable drives, although a few weeks after I had them they started making loud noises when booting up, that seems to have stopped now so maybe I just needed to break them in.
I have found the main advantage to be when you are installing programs or games. You really notice the speed increase then.

[DVDDave]

xxgriff----it works. thanks for your help, all went off perfectly. windows is recognizing one drive as 298 gig. when i got to the screen that said 39 minutes to complete windows installation, it was actually 7 minutes and i had a desktop. i have loaded a bunch of apps and it seems to be quicker. time will tell.

thanks again----dave

[xxgriff]

Good to hear. glad i was able to help

[DVDDave]

one thing, my drive letter is G??? i installed a lot of apps, but one will only install to a C drive????

[xxgriff]

how many partitions did you create? are your CD/DVD listed before(alphabetically)?

you can change drive letter assignments in windoze using administrative tools (control panel if you do not have them listed under programs).

administrative tools - computer management - look down the tree for STORAGE, then Disk management.
once selected you will see your hard drives (partitions). highlight the one you want to change, and right click, select change drive letter and Paths...

you can then select a letter to assign to the RAID partition, you may be required to change other drives to allow use of some letters. if so change them first, and then the RAID partition.

this sometimes requires you to change the path of application icons, and such, because the path listed for them has changed, and needs to point to the new location.

[DVDDave]

it wont let me change the boot drive which is currently G. i did go to disk management and have changed plenty of drive letters in the past. i am not sure one can change a boot drive.

here is a screen shot

[xxgriff]

i thought about that after i hit submit...

do you have partition magic? that is what i use(partition magic 8.1)

if you don't have it (i suspect you don't) try booting into safe mode as Administrator, and change it there. you can also try at command line, but that can be tricky (syntax must be perfect).

there is an article at Microsoft about it:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188

Please follow the instructions, 'cause your system will not boot if a mistake is made.

oh yeah... what other drives do you have installed? CD/DVD other hard drives? and their letters?

[DVDDave]

here is a screen shot of "My Computer".

[DVDDave]

i do have i think the latet partition maging 8. if i play with that, can i loose my raid volume???

[makntraks]

i do have i think the latet partition maging 8. if i play with that, can i loose my raid volume???

I told you not to **** w/ RAID........
In the nicest way possible..

That is all,
makntraks

[DVDDave]

mantraks---- i do nt know what kind of equipment you have, but i have some good shit that i want to experiment as i can afford to. right now all the shit is much faster---boot times, load app times, mozilla firefoxe loading 6 pages on start up in seperate tabs quicker that IE with one god damn page. all is great except that my drive is now G:. i will work this out and i will perfect it. being that you have not contributed anything positive, then leave my ******* thread alone. some very nice people have guided me so well that i cane home from work at six pm, installed my second SATA drive, configured my BIOS, and had a computer running in less than ten minutes. if i do say so, thanks to xxgriff, i just performed a task that i had no knowledge on three days ago, and it worked, booted the first time.

not ******* bad if i do say so myself.

someone once told me that if you have nothing nice to say, then keep your damn mouth shut. i was, am looking for suggestions to help me implement RAID for the first time in my life. if i am lucky enough to have some spending money to experiment, isn't that what it is all about??? xxgriff helped me a great deal, and i am very thankfuf for that.

if this thread does not interest you, then stop watching it and posting on it as all you have done is been a negative source for info.

let those of us that want to play and experiment do so in peace.

go bother someone else.

[makntraks]

mantraks---- i do nt know what kind of equipment you have, but i have some good shit that i want to experiment as i can afford to. right now all the shit is much faster---boot times, load app times, mozilla firefoxe loading 6 pages on start up in seperate tabs quicker that IE with one god damn page. all is great except that my drive is now G:. i will work this out and i will perfect it. being that you have not contributed anything positive, then leave my ******* thread alone. some very nice people have guided me so well that i cane home from work at six pm, installed my second SATA drive, configured my BIOS, and had a computer running in less than ten minutes. if i do say so, thanks to xxgriff, i just performed a task that i had no knowledge on three days ago, and it worked, booted the first time.

not ******* bad if i do say so myself.

someone once told me that if you have nothing nice to say, then keep your damn mouth shut. i was, am looking for suggestions to help me implement RAID for the first time in my life. if i am lucky enough to have some spending money to experiment, isn't that what it is all about??? xxgriff helped me a great deal, and i am very thankfuf for that.

if this thread does not interest you, then stop watching it and posting on it as all you have done is been a negative source for info.

let those of us that want to play and experiment do so in peace.

go bother someone else.

Well ******* excuse me Mr Technology... Negative source? I don't think so. I've just contributed input as to the pitfalls of RAID 0, that is all. I'd prefer to have a solid, working system instead of an expensive piece of shit dead in the water...
Case closed as I have no worries..... go ahead let your system bite you in the ass, I suggest you don't come here whining asking how to rescue your OS or data....

I'm finished...
makntraks

p.s.