RAID, ro no RAID?

[choobs]

I'm going to be upgrading soon and I've been planning on getting the MSI KT3 Ultra2 Motherboard, but I'm not sure whether to get the RAID function or not. I'm going to have two Hard Drives: an ATA 133 80GB (or 40 if I get cheap) and an ATA 100 40GB. Would RAID be worth the extra $30? And if so, why? Thanks in advance.

Choobs

[bigjackusa]

A raid 0 setup should give you a performance boost. The caveat is that the 2 (or more) drives in the array should be the same size. If one is bigger than the other, the difference between the two will be wasted because the array will treat the bigger one like it is the same size as the smaller one. Theoretically, the drives don't have to be indentical, but you can have problems if they are not.
One other advantage is that if your hard drives are on the raid channels, you can use the regular ide channels to fill the box with optical drives, zip drives, etc..

[RDR]

I've tried RAID set ups on and off - although you can measure the performance diffence with bench marks - the typical home user really doesn't see much of a difference -only sustained data transfer is increased - seek stays the same.

I also beleive RAID limit OC'ability - at least in my experience it has.

once you've experience a couple of broken stripes - you may wonder if it's worth it too

[Wiggo]

Really unless your heavily into video editoring then RAID won't help you much at all except in those HDD benchtest results. Also forget going for those Maxtor ATA133 drives as they're slow really and the JB series of WesternDigital with 8MB caches will wipe the floor against them any day even though only rated at ATA100. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[choobs]

Thanks for the tip on the WD hard drive! It acctually costs a couple of bucks less than the Maxtor, so I'll definitely be getting the 80GB version. I already own the other 40GB Maxtor, so I guess I'm stuck with it. Oh well, I'll live. And from the sounds of if, RAID won't be much use to me. Cool. Thanks for all the advice guys!

[JealousMidget]

once you've experience a couple of broken stripes - you may wonder if it's worth it too

Ummm.... it's not :rolleyes2

[RDR]

Ummm.... it's not :rolleyes2

I fully agree JM - but if choobs is anything like rest of us - he'll want to try it for himself anyway

[Morgan_Lander]

I tried RAID 0 with some 60GXP dethstars (unfortunately) and one bad drive does not do you any favors. RAID is fun to play around with, but it's more hassle than it's worth.

[Wiggo]

Which is what I've always seen it to be which is why I havn't been tempted to try RAID 0, unless ya want redundency then RAID 1 works well. But if ya can afford to go RAID 0+1 and then have the best of both worlds (shame I don't have the $'s for 4 WD JB HDD's). :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[RDR]

One peice of advice - if you do go with an IDE RAID set up - get some kind of cooling for your hard drives - RAID increases hard drive activity (and heat) by a significant margin - I had a couple of CAD boxes built ~2yrs. ago with a RAID 0 set up, the drives were stacked on top of each other in 3.5" bays w/no cooling - they failed in less than 3 wks

thank God for RMA's