Ant

looking at getting another 500gb drive to go along with the other and setting it up as raid.

What benefits speed wise will this give me?

i don't have a clue about RAID

hodgy0_2

none

unless you configure RAID 0 which stripes the data across both disks

increases speed, but doubles your chance of data loss, loose one disk loose the lot

but good for logfiles and other non critical data

Ant

cheers i'll leave it then

acstua

iTrader: (1)

better off putting the money towards an SSD and getting a few 1TB drives for backups

there are hybrid drives which arent too shabby

dunx

iTrader: (3)

If you have critical files, kids photos, company accounts, then RAID can mirror two drives so if one fails a complete copy is kept on the other drive.

I also recommend an SSD to speed up your system, 60 Gb or larger to be safe.

dunx

mike1210

I use an SSD for Operating System and apps.

Data is stored on 2x2TB Caviar blacks in RAID0. I get sustained read/write of 300MB/sec on an Asus Sabertooth Mobo.

SSD has far better response times though and is ideal for the OS drive

mike1210

oh and just to add......check this out

http://www.techspot.com/news/41832-m...m-process.html

Ant

Bit reluctant to buy a ssd ATM because of the pricing/size.

When they do come down I'll be on them like a tramp on chips

Pjamie

You can set up the other drive as a mirror (RAID1) and you will get increased speeds on "read" but you probably won't notice the difference that much. The main benefit of RAID at this leve1 (2 disks in RAID 1) is redundancy.

RAID is mostly about redundancy - hence the name - but on larger installations it's also used to boost disk I/O and overall system performance. If you want a mixture of performance and redundancy then RAID10 (4 disks min) will give you a significant boost. Other RAID levels such as RAID 5 or RAID 6 are often used depending upon system requirements and the type of work they are doing, but are less commonly available on desktop motherboards.

For the best RAID performance you should use a hardware RAID controller. The RAID controller built into a motherboard will probably be software RAID, but don't let that put you off.

I run RAID1 on all PC's in the office simply because it's easier to swap a damaged drive and rebuild the array than it is to re-install everything from scratch. If data becomes corrupt, or you catch a virus, RAID 1 won't save you as the problem will be on both disks (they are copies of each other).

One important point to remember - RAID IS NOT BACKUP. You must keep backups of your important data. If you don't have a centralized backup system, a USB drive is a cheap alternative, and if you can afford a couple of them for redundancy and swap them daily then your data will be even safer.