RAID Question...

[Coke Robot]

Hey,

I'm going to be installing a RAID 0 array in my system soon and I came across a potential problem: I only have six SATA ports and four of them can be configured into RAID. The issue here is I'm only going to use two hard drives for said RAID. I have five other drives to consider, two extra hard drives, two laptop hard drives, and a DVD burner. If I take four SATA ports away, I can only have two other drives running, which is a problem. :huh:

I'm kind of thinking is it possible to put a DVD drive in a SATA RAID? And, can I use the extra remaining SATA RAID port to perhaps use for a laptop drive without it being in part of the RAID 0? I'm slightly lost here....

 

[Outlander]

If you have esata on the back panel, could you use a seperate multi bay RAID enclosure and solve your issues?

 

[pparks1]

Well, if you are using 2 drives for a RAID, and 5 other drives...that's 7 total ports and you only have 6 on the machine...so that's not going to work.

If you use the ports that support RAID, you should be able to just pair up 2 of them for that RAID0 array. This would leave the other 2 ports as standalone SATA ports. Thus, you could plug a DVD into one and a hard drive into the other, etc. And obviously you would still have the other 2 ports on the other controller which don't support RAID.

Can I ask why you are going to do a RAID0? If it's for speed, get an SSD instead and really have some speed. It's a much better idea than RAID0. With RAID0 if either hard drive fails, you lose everything on both drives.

 

[Devux]

Agreed. RAID 0 is a gamble. If you are going for more storage space, just buy a bigger drive. Speed, go for SSD like pparks1 said. Redundancy go for RAID 5

 

[Coke Robot]

I plan a RAID 0 mostly for speed and storage. I'd rather spend 350 dollars on four terabytes of storage than for less than 200 or so gigs. Also, my madreboard supports SATA II, so I'd be almost capping it out with a RAID setup. But at the same time, I'd like redundancy because yeah, it is rather risky. Then again, I really don't know if I will be using the other hard drive bay. Hmmm, a RAID card perhaps?