Hey, so Im pretty noob with raid-0 setups and stuff, but i was wondering if it was possible to run raid-0 with two hdd's that arent raptors. Would running 2 x 320G WD hardrives in raid-0 setup be more fast and putout better performance than just running a single, lets say, 750GB hardrive?

Also are any mid to high range mother boards raid-0 compatible or what?


thanks!


Computer Specs just incase you need them!

GPU: XFX Geforce 8800gt 512MB 256-bit overclocked
HDDs: 2 x Western Digital 320GB 7200 RPM sata 3.0gb/s <possibly raid-0?>
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked
RAM: 4GB Crucial Ballistix (2 x 1GB) 240-pin DDR2 800
Motherboard: Im not really sure on a motherboard as of yet, i have a forum going in the mobo section asking for suggestions, so if you have any please let me know

Overall im just looking for performance. High speed and high fps for up-to-date games.


Thanks!

any thoughts or help at all?

You *can* RAID just about any two drives together, they don't even need to be the same model or size, but there is no reason to do that and can destroy the performance. Also, any modern motherboard should support RAID0. That in mind, I wouldn't suggest that people use RAID0 without a specific need of it. In day-to-day activities like running programs my RAID doesn't really seem to help much but for transferring large video files it does help. There is also the danger of data loss because if 1 drive fails you lose all the data. Also, you'd be running 2 hard drives instead of 1 meaning more heat and power draw, and 1 fewer hard drive slot for the future. My advice, get a single larger hard drive.

-mcg

thanks bro. advice appreciated and taken into consideration.

I have mine on raid 0.......I would not do that unless you have another harddrive for backup cause if 1 fails......well.......poof......all your info

2 x 250 in raid 0. 1 Drive fails, its gone
1 x 500 non raid. 1 drives fails, its gone.

Seems either way you look at it your data will be gone(if its a bad failure), thats what CD/DVD's and external drives are for. I don't even bother backing up my raid(at least not now, its just windows and games and media files that are not yet compressed). But i do backup my important files from the non raid drives to my external drive and DVD's

What will raid0 not help?

-Frame Rates - Once a game is in ram(loaded) there is not much more use of the hard drive
-Load time on games that use heavily compressed files(in most cases the cpu becomes the bottleneck of not being able to decompress as fast as the hard drive can feed it)
-MP3's do not sound better on raid

What it will help

+Game loads for games that do not use files that are heavily compressed(light compressed games and maps will load faster as long as the cpu can keep up with the drive. Most FPS will load quicker, not play quicker tho).
+It may reduce(but not eliminate) lag spikes if a game has to load data on the fly(Games that have no load screens and load as you walk, mostly MMO's)
+Writing and reading uncompressed large video and audio(Multichannel) files.
+Loading windows(But not by much)

So the real question is. What do you want it for? If its just games, you may get loaded quicker but it will not give you faster frames. If you work with allot of multimedia then raid0 is not a bad idea.

I you have a spare drive(External works well for this) for back-up all the "Risk" of raid0 is not a problem. In that case. give er

I have raid0 with no regrets