i want to setup a raid... but i dont know where to start

[David.Seth2]

so i just got 250 extra bucks from an old acquaintance (i guess she kept a tab of all the times she borrowed money from me and actually paid me back in a lump sum!). so i was thinking of what i could get and decided that i want to get a raid setup. i have an EVGA 680i SLI mother board. It says it can handle raid setup, and by looking at the board i see 4 spare sata slots. So i was thinking of getting 4 Seagate Barracuda 7200 500 gig hard drives from Newegg. Is this a good potential setup? Can I even do 4? Or is two enough? Any one with experience on this? I know next to nothing about raid, except that i want raid 0, not raid 1. that much i do know :E

Or should I spend the money to upgrade to Vista? Running Xp I can't take advantage of dx10, but on the other hand a raid setup would be nice and help with my current limited hard drive space. Decisions!

 

[Krynn72]

I dont know anything about Raid, but I do know that upgrading to vista shouldn't cost any money. Nobody actually buys it besides companies and manufacturers. And secondly, would you even need a a terrabyte of space?

 

[David.Seth2]

I dont know anything about Raid, but I do know that upgrading to vista shouldn't cost any money. Nobody actually buys it besides companies and manufacturers. And secondly, would you even need a a terrabyte of space?

I have a (combined) current total of 831 gigs of hard drive space (two internals and 1 external). Of that 831 i have 256 gigs free. Yeah it is a lot still left, but I want speed and more room. Maybe only 2 hard drives raided then? plus my hard drives are getting cluttered so I want to designate the big raid for os and games, then the 2 smaller internal drives for video editing, programs, utilities, etc... and finally the 3rd external for mp3's and pictures.

and as for vista: I have obtained every windows os since 3.1 days without buying them. XP is the first os i have purchased, and (if I get it) vista will be my second. I guess I owe it to them. But is Vista that great to begin with? should I wait for windows 7?

 

[Hazar]

here's a good place to get started:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/06/11/understanding_raid/1

 

[giant384]

setting up raid is actually a very easy task. the link above that hazar posted should give you all the answers you need.

 

[David.Seth2]

EDIT: never mind. My power supply went bust this morning so i just had to throw down 200 for a new one. Plus, talking to a pc guru friend he talked me down of doing a raid setup. he said just to save and get a single tera byte hard drive instead. i guess that's what I'll do (when i get some money saved up).

ah thanks for the link Hazar. That explained it all. I have been doing google searches, but nothing came up for me with that kind of clarity. So I guess the question is should I go with a 3 hard drive raid5 setup? or 2 (or 4) raid 0 set up? and then i just found another article on toms hardware that says for home pc, raid 0+1 or raid 10 is better than raid 5. oh god my brain hurts. but i guess raid 10 seems the best, at least according to this chart


on a side note, i found this on one of my google searches... awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

 

[Adabiviak]

A horde of your finest minions is a good a place to start as any - don't give me that crap about hard drives, you need to burn and pillage if you're going to raid properly.

 

[L3N!N]

If you have Photoshop Cs3 and use it a lot, I'd have to suggest this article on it. If you don't use Photoshop at all, I'd still suggest looking at the article, it reveals a lot.

 

[tesher06]

Setting up a raid is pretty hard. First you might want to find 40 people or be in a large guild. Then theres the task of getting all of them to join the group. Goodluck though