Thread: What is the best raid setup for my pc?

What is the best raid setup for my pc? (if i move alot of media around)

what is the best way to set it up?

What hard drives to buy, i'm thinking 2 x 1tb?



I have about $100 to spend :P

Try raid5. You'll need a minimum of 3 harddisks. Your $100 dollar won't be enough though unless you want to buy 3 500 gig drives

Originally Posted by concrete

Try raid5. You'll need a minimum of 3 harddisks. Your $100 dollar won't be enough though unless you want to buy 3 500 gig drives

do all the drive have to be the same size/make/type??
cos i have the computer already it obviously has a drive in it so could i use that with the two i buy? :P
I can get 2 x 1tb hard drives for $100

If you'll only put two drives you can only have raid1. It must be the same size and model. And you must reformat those drives together with your stock drive.

When you use raid 5. If the drives vary in capacity, the smallest of them sets the limit. Therefore, the usable capacity of a RAID 5 array is (N-1*Smin), where N is the total number of drives in the array and Smin is the capacity of the smallest drive in the array.

By the way what would you use as your raid controller? Is it the one in the mbord?

Originally Posted by concrete

If you'll only put two drives you can only have raid1. It must be the same size and model. And you must reformat those drives together with your stock drive.

When you use raid 5. If the drives vary in capacity, the smallest of them sets the limit. Therefore, the usable capacity of a RAID 5 array is (N-1*Smin), where N is the total number of drives in the array and Smin is the capacity of the smallest drive in the array.

By the way what would you use as your raid controller? Is it the one in the mbord?

yes the one in the mbord

If you'll use that better use raid1 cause it's slow to rebuild the array when you don't use a dedicated raid card. But I've read somewhere that it's better to use backup than RAID. Cause if you use raid all your mistakes (you delete a file, have virus, trojan, etc.) will be mirrored to the other drives. But if you use a backup you can revert back to your previous state. So personally for me I would setup a backup. I just don't have the money for it currently...

If the media files are NOT that important to you and you just want fast read/write transfers between your drives then raid0 should be sufficient for your system.

Or you could just buy a single 2TB drive that is < $100. They have one on sale at Newegg.

Don't bother with raid, think about if you need to upgrade your computer motherboard or your motherboard malfunction what are you gonna do... If you really want to go raid buy a separate raid card that allow you install on different motherboard and easy to get replacement. Raid is not meant for backup, and more like keep the system running to avoid downtime. I would suggest just do a monthly backup for your files if you worry.

Also, I never have any harddisk fail on me yet and that include my 2GB hardisk from my Pentium 133 and up to date 2TB WD Green and 3xSSD(maybe I'm lucky...). I only retire them as my collections when they become outdated and slow.

For performance get yourself a SSD, <3 mine so much.

Take a look at this link, lots of disccusion and thought on raid or backup. The rest is up to you. =)
Home RAID vs backup?

Originally Posted by Kincor

Don't bother with raid, think about if you need to upgrade your computer motherboard or your motherboard malfunction what are you gonna do... If you really want to go raid buy a separate raid card that allow you install on different motherboard and easy to get replacement. Raid is not meant for backup, and more like keep the system running to avoid downtime. I would suggest just do a monthly backup for your files if you worry.

Also, I never have any harddisk fail on me yet and that include my 2GB hardisk from my Pentium 133 and up to date 2TB WD Green and 3xSSD(maybe I'm lucky...). I only retire them as my collections when they become outdated and slow.

For performance get yourself a SSD, <3 mine so much.

Take a look at this link, lots of disccusion and thought on raid or backup. The rest is up to you. =)
Home RAID vs backup?

ok what about RAID 0 with 2 x 60gb SSD's (Corsair 60GB Force SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s)
I know this will be more expensive but I'm after performance, and the SSD's are more reliable than SATA drive's so they could be setup as RAID 0. Is this a good idea??