RAID and HD questions.... Help

OK. so I don't kno all that much about HD drives and RAID.. I'm not sure what to do here, but I have my main HD in my new system.. it's a 500GB Seagate Cuda the 32mb Cache 7200.(11) version.. it's a pretty good HD I've read. and currently just plugged in.. no special way or RAID setting or anything. I also have my old computers 250GB HD in here. I moved everything over from my old PC.. and just been lazy and have not taken the 250GB out.. well now I'm going to take it out.. and sell that computer... and from a freind I'm getting a deal on a 250GB HD.. So my question is what can I do with it.. What advantages can I get with using RAID 0 or 1 or whatever. it's a 250GB Spinpoint Drive. I don't kno what RAIDS all about.. how much performance will I gain with it.. whats the best way to hook it all up? I want to have my stuff backed up.. not everything. but the important stuff thats on my 500 I want to have on this new 250 I'm getting. So if someone could please shed some light.. SCSI RAID GURU.. ur name says it all.. enlighten me please!

he also has a 74GB raptor I can get from him if I want.. whats the advantages of that.. Please let me kno as this is one of the main areas I'm not to knowledgeable in.. thanks again x64.

You would need two identical drives for RAID 1 to work properly. If you mix 250 and 500, RAID 1 would be 250. Smallest drive sets size in RAID.

A 74GB Raptor would be a nice OS drive. I would do three drives.

74GB OS
250GB and 500GB for paging and applications.

Good topic Chris - I have a couple of questions as well.

Michael, I have the opportunity to grab a couple more of the same Seagate drive I currently have - 500 GB 32MB RAM - if I were to grab 2 more, that would give me 4 total - while definitely not as fast as the Raptors, they would work for me in my budget.

My desire is this: I want this system to be multi-booting - Vista x64, OpenSolaris x64 (just received the disc), Gentoo AMD64 and XP 64 - and I want to use at least 2 of the drives in a RAID for all 4 OSs - is that possible? I mean, after creating a RAID array, can I 'partition' them as I would like (the final result would be most likely the Vista boot manager handling all of the booting options....

Also, would it make sense to also take the other 2 and form them into a separate RAID (if even possible with my mobo, which I don't thin kit is)?

Hi,

For the best results when considering a RAID setup you need to be using identical drives, preferably from the same manufacturer and the same model and specification. As far as I am aware, onboard RAID solutions only allow for the use of a single RAID array at a time, so for multiple RAID arrays you will probably need an interface card for each additional array. This limitation may or may not apply for server boards. As regards multi-booting, it should be possible although I don't recommend it for RAID arrays. You need to make sure that you can obtain the correct drivers in order for your OSs to be able to make use of the RAID array, bearing in mind that a faulty driver might well damage the array and thus potentially the other OSs. Having a look at the website for your motherboard, it only mentions XP and Vista in the downloads area, so you might be out of luck unless the other OSs can see the RAID array 'out of the box'.
Dwarf

Multi-booting can be a pain to do. One OS breaks, you have to repair install each OS before it. RAID 1+0 will give you protection and performance. RAID speed is important to do A/V and CAD work with heavy storage IOs. For most users, you won't see more than a few seconds increase. I used to do multi-booting. I don't do it anymore.

I am interested in multibooting, unless I can successfully incorporate all of these OSs into VMs (something that I haven't checked out fully - yet).

Thanks for the info Dwarf - I didn't even think about the drivers, but I knew that eventually I would have to find hem for both Solaris and Gentoo. Also, the drives are going to be *identical* - the exact same drives, specs, size, etc. The WD i have listed in my sig would come out and get 'donated' to my parents for a second drive so I can institute full HD backups (they currently have a 250 in there, and I would not be surprised to see that it is an identical drive there as well).

Thanks for the advice, Michael - I was looking at possibly doing protection more than anything - I figure that a single 500 GB would do well now for my storage and 3 of the 500s would do well for a RAID.

I would do RAID 1 for OS over RAID for apps and data. If the OS crashes, you still need to reinstall eveything. I am doing

RAID 1: OS
RAID 5: apps and data
RAID 0: paging, temp, target of A/V and CAD apps.

johngalt said:

Good topic Chris - I have a couple of questions as well.

Michael, I have the opportunity to grab a couple more of the same Seagate drive I currently have - 500 GB 32MB RAM - if I were to grab 2 more, that would give me 4 total - while definitely not as fast as the Raptors, they would work for me in my budget.

My desire is this: I want this system to be multi-booting - Vista x64, OpenSolaris x64 (just received the disc), Gentoo AMD64 and XP 64 - and I want to use at least 2 of the drives in a RAID for all 4 OSs - is that possible? I mean, after creating a RAID array, can I 'partition' them as I would like (the final result would be most likely the Vista boot manager handling all of the booting options....

Also, would it make sense to also take the other 2 and form them into a separate RAID (if even possible with my mobo, which I don't thin kit is)?

Click to expand...

I see that I *can* do this - see Can you do multiple types of raid simulataneosly?

I would have to set which port was which type of RAID, but according to this info I can support multiple RAIDs from my motherboard.

thats terrible john. that link he's talking about how he has a "Spare" 780i board. thats not cool. I want one.