To RAID or not to RAID.....

Question

Forum Gods I have an issue:
I have two SATA drives in my system and I am using both of them as seperate drives currently. How will RAID increase performance? I am kinda a nub when it comes to this issue so any information on RAID would be greatly appreciated. Should or shouldn't I? I mostly play games and watch movies on my system if that makes any difference. Also if I should RAID my drives which type should I do and HOW DO I DO IT!! Thanks ahead of time for any response it is much appreciated.

Woody

ejn63 · Answer

RAID 0 won't do much, if anything for desktop performance, but it will double your chances of data loss (if you lose either drive, you lose everything). Translation: it's not worth the risk.

krdomingue · Answer

If you are currently happy with your gaming performance, then I would leave it alone.  Raid 0 will improve your performance, but at the increased risk of loosing your data.  I doubt if you would notice the performance unless you are a high end gamer.  If that is the case, then you would be better-off with a Raptor drive.  Raid 1 will not give you noticeable performance increase, but it will give you more data protection.  If you want to make the conversion, you will need to back up all of your data first and you can find detailed instructions in the owners manual.

pdschweitzer · Answer

oOoWOODYoOo wrote:
Forum Gods I have an issue:
I have two SATA drives in my system and I am using both of them as seperate drives currently. How will RAID increase performance? I am kinda a nub when it comes to this issue so any information on RAID would be greatly appreciated. Should or shouldn't I? I mostly play games and watch movies on my system if that makes any difference. Also if I should RAID my drives which type should I do and HOW DO I DO IT!! Thanks ahead of time for any response it is much appreciated.

Woody

Save yourself a lot of headaches and do NOT raid - period.

Morpheus Phreak · Answer

Although note that it will do so with approximately the same risk as having 2 seperate hard drives with one used for windows and one used for programs or data storage.

collector386 · Answer

I have an XPS 400 with 2-250 Gig hard drives running in RAID1. Recently Drive 0 (boot drive) failed, My computer booted to drive 1 and I went on with what I was doing with no loss of data until Dell sent me another drive. After installing the new drive it was recognized by the Intel Matrix Storage Manager and rebuilt automatically with the data from drive 1. I am now operating normaly with 100%  back up of programs and data. I love this RAID 1. Sure saved me a lot of time not having to reinstall the operating system and all the programs.

stillnoxps410ye · Answer

WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO CHANGE MY RAID 0 SETUP TO JUST HAVING TWO DRIVES?   DO I HAVE TO CONTACT DELL OR IS IT JUST A MATTER OF PLUGGING AND UNPLUGGING?   THNX.   DELL XPS 410 INTEL E6600 500GB 2 X 250 GIG DRIVES

Morpheus Phreak · Answer

@stillnoxps410yet wrote:

WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO CHANGE MY RAID 0 SETUP TO JUST HAVING TWO DRIVES?

DO I HAVE TO CONTACT DELL OR IS IT JUST A MATTER OF PLUGGING AND UNPLUGGING?

THNX.

DELL XPS 410

INTEL E6600

500GB 2 X 250 GIG DRIVES

In the BIOS just set it up to not use RAID.

Note that by doing so you will lose all data currently on the drive and will have to reinstall the OS and all programs.

Storage, Drives & Media

To RAID or not to RAID.....

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