[DeadEye]

First off, sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum, figured this might be the best spot so I put it here...

Now my question:

Somebody recommended to me earlier that when I get my new computer, that I should set it up in a "raid config"

Does anyone know what that is or does? Personally never heard the term before..

Thanks for the help

-Mike

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Users who like to use RAID do it for two main reasons:

1. Speed
2. Data backup

RAID 0 (aka striping) is used for speed and requires at least 2 hard drives. With RAID 0 you will gain greater read and access speeds since it will be using all the channels/buses from the two hard drives. This is great if you are editing video/audio/graphic. The con here is that if one of the hard drive fails, forget about saving the data on the other hard drive. What RAID 0 essentially does is "share" the data between the two hard drives. So even when you are working on one file and save it, it is saved on the two hard drives. So losing one hard drive's data, will render the data on the other hard drive useless.

RAID 1 also called mirroring, is a true RAID design. It's used for copying (backing up) data from hard drive #1 to #2. That's all it does. The pro here is if one of the hard drive fails, the other one is right there ready for you to use (since it has all the data already). The con is that you will be using TWICE as much storage to store the same data.

There are more RAID configurations but these are the two most common ones. If you want to learn more about them, take a look here.

[greyknight17]

Users who like to use RAID do it for two main reasons:

1. Speed
2. Data backup

RAID 0 (aka striping) is used for speed and requires at least 2 hard drives. With RAID 0 you will gain greater read and access speeds since it will be using all the channels/buses from the two hard drives. This is great if you are editing video/audio/graphic. The con here is that if one of the hard drive fails, forget about saving the data on the other hard drive. What RAID 0 essentially does is "share" the data between the two hard drives. So even when you are working on one file and save it, it is saved on the two hard drives. So losing one hard drive's data, will render the data on the other hard drive useless.

RAID 1 also called mirroring, is a true RAID design. It's used for copying (backing up) data from hard drive #1 to #2. That's all it does. The pro here is if one of the hard drive fails, the other one is right there ready for you to use (since it has all the data already). The con is that you will be using TWICE as much storage to store the same data.

There are more RAID configurations but these are the two most common ones. If you want to learn more about them, take a look here.

[DeadEye]

Im going to use these for gaming-would "raid" be effective for that?

[greyknight17]

Unless these games are really resource intensive, I would say no...not worth the investment to have RAID setup. RAID 0 is useful where you deal with lots of read/write access. I'm only mentioning RAID 0 here since that's probably what you really wanted to know about...performance/speed wise.

[DeadEye]

Ok Grey, thanks, yea I play alot of high performance games. Ill just have to see how my new system handles them, then ill decide if I want to set up the config on it.

Thanks man

-Mike

[greyknight17]

No problem Mike.

Just keep in mind that if you do use RAID 0, it does not provide any data backup (which is what RAID really means). So backup your data to an external media (CD/DVD, or external hard drive) if you are using RAID 0. Otherwise, you might want to look into a RAID 0+1 or other alternatives (one using 3 hard drives) so it provides both better performance and secure your data by making a backup.

[DeadEye]

Aight, Ill probably just do the RAID 0 one for now. I dont have anything on my ocmp that I couldnt put back on, everything else ive got backups of. If I ever get a 3rd HD ill definetly look into the 3 HD thing though.

Thanks (agian )

-Mike