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It's going inside of the machine.

Why would I want to work a RAID setup if I can get one of these pretty good Seagate drives and have it do what it's gotta do?

= Justin

Justin from Queens wrote:It's going inside of the machine.

Why would I want to work a RAID setup if I can get one of these pretty good Seagate drives and have it do what it's gotta do?

= Justin

Because no matter how good your hard disk is, there's always a chance that one of the heads will drop by 0.05mm and plough a ditch into a platter

It depends on what you're going to store on the disk. If it's critical data, either implement some kind of regular backup solution or use RAID 1. If you can afford for the box to be out of commission for a few days then don't bother.

I know of at least one studio that uses RAID 1 in their recording machines because their clients can't come back the following week when the replacement hard disk gets added.

I wanted to resurrect this thread in hope of gaining some knowledge about RAID. Hopefully the computer gurus 'round here will come to my rescue yet again!

Here's my scenario - I have one Maxtor (I know, sorry) 120 GB SATA 150 drive, set up for RAID 0 (yup, sorry again) on my ABIT AV8 motherboard - with onboard VIA chipset sata controller.

Now, I know that installing the VIA raid software was completely pointless, and serves no purpose whatsoever with only 1 drive.

However, I did this because I was planning at a future date to install another 120 GB drive....and still use striping. I use my computer to record, but only myself, so I don't care about retakes and I don't want to use mirroring.

I have two questions:

First, since one drive is already on controller 0/channel 0, can I just add a new drive, set it up on controller 0/channel 1, and that's it? Or do I need to format everything when I get the new drive and install windows on this configuration from scratch?

Second, I would prefer to get a Seagate 120 GB sata150 as my second drive. They're pretty cheap on newegg right now. Can I do this, or do I have to get another Maxtor drive?

Thanks in advance for any help on this...I am a complete newbie when it comes to RAID!

for what it's worth, i've had several hard drives and the only failures were 2 western digitals

unarmedman wrote:First, since one drive is already on controller 0/channel 0, can I just add a new drive, set it up on controller 0/channel 1, and that's it? Or do I need to format everything when I get the new drive and install windows on this configuration from scratch?

I think (but am not 100% sure) that you'll need to reformat your drives. Adding a second drive in RAID 0 means that the data needs to get striped, and I don't think any consumer-level PC software supports adding a second drive to RAID 0 on the fly. RAID 1, probably - but RAID 0, I don't think so.

I would get a spindle of DVDs, backup your hard drive and start from scratch. The RAID / BIOS setup will be a lot easier that way.

unarmedman wrote:Second, I would prefer to get a Seagate 120 GB sata150 as my second drive. They're pretty cheap on newegg right now. Can I do this, or do I have to get another Maxtor drive?

I believe the drives should be the same capacity, but if they are not, the RAID controller will "format" the larger as having the same capacity as the smaller one.

I'm 99% sure that they don't have to be from the same vendor, but there can be differences in transfer rates that can confuse RAID controllers (see this article).

Now, I'm no expert on this, so get a second opinion...but I hope it helps some.

Keep in mind that RAID 1 will only protect against hardware failure. You still need to make regular backups. It won't protect you against corrupted files due to software crashes or accidental deletion.

Oh, and while we're bashing our least favorite brands: I have one Maxtor and four WD drives. The Maxtor failed.

Hey, thanks for the responses about RAID - that article you linked to stewie was most helpful. I started the article, but haven't finished reading it yet. I haven't seen anything about transfer rates so far, so I'm sure I'll get to that. Both the Seagate and Maxtor drives are SATA 150, have an 8 MB buffer, 7200 RPM, and 120 GB. In windows here, the capacity shown for the maxtor is 114 GB...so I'm assuming that will probably be what's doubled up in RAID 0.

I kinda figured I'd have to reformat, but no big deal....I won't have to back up much...this setup is only 6 months old.

Again, thanks for the help!

www.pacificproaudio.com

PPA 911 Oxford 400 firewire

Comes 120 gig all the way up to 250 now I think... at about $1 a gig. Great recordings drives....no fans, no noize in the lines, great/fast service as well.

I've had almost every major brand fail on me over the years. Trying Seagate this time out for the first time. We'll see...

Regardless, ALWAYS mirror your drives, no matter what brand you choose! Even the best brands put out a clunker now and then, and failure can happen so fast that you might not be able to retrieve your data from the dead/dying drive. My last drive was fine one minute and then completely inaccessible the next. Over 2 years worth of projects on the drive. Had it not been mirrored, I would've lost years of work instead of minutes.

oh yeah, i wanted to mention.... it appears that buying an internal HD and an external enclosure and combining them is MUCH cheaper than buying a standalone external hard drive. like... more than 20% cheaper at the place i buy HD stuff from.