RoysterGTX Posted April 1, 2009 Posted April 1, 2009 hello everyone! Ok its time for me to add an addtional Hard Drive. I already have one 150gigs of raptor, and i would like to add one more 150gigs of raptor i would like to set up a raid0, so i could use 300gigs and even more speed. now here is the problem... I have NO idea how to do it. I have xfx780i raid supported mobo. do i go to the bios to set up the raid? help plz ++see my sig for my rig++ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verran Posted April 1, 2009 Posted April 1, 2009 If you're planning this for gaming performance, I'd save your money because it probably won't make much difference. You might want to consider an SSD instead. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoysterGTX Posted April 1, 2009 Posted April 1, 2009 If you're planning this for gaming performance, I'd save your money because it probably won't make much difference. You might want to consider an SSD instead. mainly for gaming but i still do stuffs like.. photoshop and store music, pictures and movies... i dont think 150gigs are enough. and i want more speed bc of my "greed" btw what is SSD? (sorry im a noob) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verran Posted April 1, 2009 Posted April 1, 2009 SSD is Solid State Drive. Think of a hard drive made up of flash memory like from a USB thumb drive. They're roughly the same price as Raptors and they're very fast. Anyways, that speed comment is what I'm talking about. With the usage you're talking about, you're probably not going to see any speed increase. RAID increases sustained throughput speeds, not seek times. That's why it won't be much faster. Spend some time reading the RAID threads in this forum. You'll see that most people share this opinion lately. If you're looking for gaming performance, RAID-0 really doesn't make much difference. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoysterGTX Posted April 1, 2009 Posted April 1, 2009 SSD is Solid State Drive. Think of a hard drive made up of flash memory like from a USB thumb drive. They're roughly the same price as Raptors and they're very fast. Anyways, that speed comment is what I'm talking about. With the usage you're talking about, you're probably not going to see any speed increase. RAID increases sustained throughput speeds, not seek times. That's why it won't be much faster. Spend some time reading the RAID threads in this forum. You'll see that most people share this opinion lately. If you're looking for gaming performance, RAID-0 really doesn't make much difference. oh~ i see. okay ill check on that raid threads. thank you very much. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
xPETEZx Posted April 1, 2009 Posted April 1, 2009 Another vote from me AGAINT going with a RAID. Been there, done that. NOT worth it. Not faster for the kind of use ur talking about. SSD's are really the way to go for speed! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Great_Gig Posted April 2, 2009 Posted April 2, 2009 (edited) Having just set up a RAID-0 on my main machine I concur with the ^ comments. You will see your O/S load quickly and programmes will open faster, but after that you won't really notice a significant difference to general performance - increases in gaming speed will be negligible. SSD can give you universally fast performance, but the drives are still expensive and the affordable lower priced models still only offer similar speeds to Raptors, in real world performance. Benchmarks are fine and give bragging rights, but you have to balance that against cost and what you really want/need from your system. This article is a few years old, but the content is still valid. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1 But as I and many others have done, give it a try anyway - you will learn stuff and find out for yourself what it's all about and what improvements it gives you. Then you can make an informed choice about whether it's worth it? Edited April 3, 2009 by Great_Gig Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebarone Posted April 3, 2009 Posted April 3, 2009 I vote for creating the RAID. Heres how to do what you asked: Disclaimer: Although I used this method to create my own RAID-0 array, I'm not 100% sure this will work due to driver issues and hardware differences. However, you will not lose any data. 1- http://www.xfxsupport.com/download/downloa...mp;cusid=628414 <--- Download that and read through it. If the link doesnt work, go to the XFX website and under the Support section for your motherboard, you'll find a guide called "Help Guide - Raid Configuration - Important Tips for a RAID configuration" 2- The guide indicates you will need to create the array before installing Windows, but I think this can be circumvented. Follow the steps in the guide for installing the RAID driver in Windows. 3- You will need a few extra things if this is to work. First you'll obviously need your identical 150GB hard drive that you'll be bringing into the array. Second you will need yet another hard drive... it doesnt matter what drive this is, so long as it has 150GB of free space. It can be a friend's drive, a usb drive, a backup drive, whatever. Lastly you will need a program called Acronis TrueImage. (link is to the trial version, I'm not sure of the limitations but I would reccomend buying it) 4- Using Acronis, do two things. First, create an image of your current system, and save the image onto your BACKUP drive, NOT the one you will be bringing into the array. This could take quite a while, upwards of an hour. Second, click Protection Tools -> Create bootable rescue media, and burn yourself a bootable rescue CD. Remove the CD from the system. 5- Shut down and unplug the drive that you saved your image to. Its absolutely critical that you do not lose that image file, or else you will lose everything. Unplugging it now ensures that when you create the array, you dont use the disk with the image stored on it. Afterwards you'll plug it back in. 6- Create your array, following the XFX Guide linked in step 1. I reccomend a 64k stripe size for gaming, others will say 128k, the difference is negligible so follow your heart. This step will destroy all your data off your original drive, hence why that image you made is so critical. 7- Plug your backup drive back in, and put in your rescure CD created in step 4. Enter the BIOS and ensure that the computer will boot from a CD before a hard drive. 8- Boot from the Acronis Rescue CD. This could take a while to load, as well as take a while to search for backup devices. Using the Acronis utility, restore your backup image to your new RAID-0 drive. The drive *should* show up as a single 300GB drive. This process may take some time. 9- You're done. Remove the bootable CD and boot into Windows like normal. In case of emergency: If something fails, or doesnt work like I described, do not worry. Step 6 is the first and only time you destroy any data. If you do not make it to 6, you havent done anything. If you make it past 6, you can disable the RAID functionality of your board in your BIOS and repeat steps 7-8-9 to restore your original drive, absolutely no harm done. Have fun, and good luck! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
uneedav8 Posted April 3, 2009 Posted April 3, 2009 RAID those raptors... :thumbs-up: Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.