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Viable setup?

Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 8:51 am
by KnightRid
OK, this is how I ma thinking of setting up my computer with RAID...

Asus P5Q motherboard that has Drive Xpert - basically a simple RAID 1 config.

Drives I have

2 - 500gb
4 - 1tb
2 - 200gb

thinking of doing all 4 1tb drives for the RAID in a RAID 5 config so I can share everything throughout the house on that.

I was going to take the 2 500gb drives and use 1 as the boot drive and then have the other as the Drive Xpert backup drive

Now, do you think I should leave one of the 120gb drives in to use as just a swap drive? I always separate the swap drive to another one when I do a build, but I think it would hurt performance if I used the RAID array as the swap drive also? If you think I should use the 120gb for the swap, should I use it for the recycle bin also (have to read up to see if I can change the recycle bin location in vista or not)?

Your help is always VERY much appreciated!

Mike

I might try and get this raid up and running tomorrow, I think I have all the updated drivers, programs and bios for it in case i need them. I also read the manual (OMG - I know, well I read MOST of it :p) so I think I am prepared - install the card, the drives, setup in bios that pops up during boot, load webpam in windows and format.

Re: Viable setup?

Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 9:27 am
by dicecca112
No need to dedicate a single drive to swap, just put the swap file on the fastest drive.

Since you have my RAID card, I would do RAID 10, better performance, and it provides close to the same reliability as RAID 5. Now if you don't care about speed, then do the RAID 5

Re: Viable setup?

Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 11:21 am
by hnzw_rui
I haven't tried it myself but from accounts of several people I know, performance of motherboard RAID5 sucks. I think they were saying writes were really slow. Slower than single disk performance. Take that as you will.

If you don't need all the storage space, a RAID10 set-up would likely be better.

Re: Viable setup?

Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 5:42 am
by KnightRid
dicecca112 wrote:No need to dedicate a single drive to swap, just put the swap file on the fastest drive.

Since you have my RAID card, I would do RAID 10, better performance, and it provides close to the same reliability as RAID 5. Now if you don't care about speed, then do the RAID 5
Now correct me if I am wrong, but RAID 10 will take half the space away and RAID 5 will take only 1 of the drives away for parity? I am not too worried about speed as it will mainly be for data and some movies I want to stream throughout the house using the gigabit or wireless N network. I would hate to lose that extra 1tb of space for redundancy unless it will make a HUGE difference with streaming dvds. I have over 800 dvd sets now, so I will end up having wuite a few on these drives ;) I could use a bunch more drives, but I will just rip some, delete, rip others, play through the dvd player on the computer, etc.

Mike

I am REAL glad I printed that book out for the card!!! AWESOME guide for a noob to RAID like myself!