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Controller Card and RAID Basics?
Hi, could someone please explain if there are any benefits to a SAS 6/iR SAS RAID Integrated Controller card. I am not at all certain what are the advantages of a RAID Controller card. I have a machine with a single 80GB HDD and I plan to install another HDD with a larger capacity. There is currently no OS on the system.
Would the RAID card limit me to adding another HDD and do I have to install the same size. I would like to use both the 80GB HDD as well as the new large capacity HDD (probably 1TB).
Does RAID 0 mean there is no RAID. I read that if I mix HDD of varying capacity in a RAID 0 configuration than the size of the Total Array is actually going to be limited to the size of the smallest disk hence in my case even if I have a 1TB HDD and a 80GB HDD than my array is going to be 160GB. Is that true and do I have to use RAID.
Pls help. Thx
The SAS 6/iR controller allows the creation of RAID 0 and RAID 1 volumes. In a machine with a single HDD there is no real advantage to have a RAID volume.
The SAS 6/iR controller can also be used without configuring any RAID volumes, in that case you will see the HDDs directly. On this mode, you can use both HDD taking advantage of all their capacity 80GB + 1TB . . . and they will appear on the OS as two separate disks.
RAID 0 groups all HDDs as one larger volume without any data protection; failure of one of the HDD means data in all HDDs is lost but, the performance (read/write) is better than one single bigger HDD. You are correct: the array size will be limited by the size of the smallest HDD. You do NOT need to use RAID on a SAS 6/iR controller, you can chose to access the HDD directly without any RAID volumes; you can also create two RAID 0 volumes (one for each HDD).
EDSAMark
3 Posts
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Posted January 12th, 2009 12:00
vikd: RAID 0 (and others) intelligently discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_0#RAID_0