RAID

[Mr.Stevo]

I been looking through Mobo's lately and then I see this thing called RAID.

 

I have no idea what does it do or if its good or bad. Can someone explain this to me?

 

Thanks

[Wolf68k]

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (although the I changes depending oh who you ask/talk to, but bottom line it's all the same).

 

RAID can do many things. I'll explain it better in examples.

 

RAID 0 is taking 2x 300GB HDDs and makes Windows see them as look like a single HDD that is 600GB. The data is written to both drives. The pro is that you get fast write speeds and 1 huge space. The con, if one drive fails all data on the set up is lost.

 

RAID 1 is taking 2x 300GB HDDs and Windows sees one 300GB drive like normal but the data is written to both drives at the same time. One you can work with, the other is the mirror as back up incase one drive fails. The pro here is obvious, if a drive fails you haven't lost anything since it's backed up already. The con, no writting speed boast like you get from RAID 0 and you only get the space as if it was one drive instead of 2.

 

RAID 0/1 is taking 4x 300GB HDDs and Windows sees 2 of them as a 600GB drive while the other 2 are used as the mirror. You get pros of RAID 0 and of RAID 1 at the same time.

 

There are other RAID configurations but these are the common ones you'll see avalible on most mobos.

[sate]

But it doesn't have to be a 300 GB HDD right?

 

Lol, I never heard of RAID 0/1. I guess I should be buying me another two HDDs and do that instead of just RAID 0 (i'm afraid of my HDD will break, damn maxtor you wouldn't dare!)...

[Bond996]

But it doesn't have to be a 300 GB HDD right?

 

Lol, I never heard of RAID 0/1. I guess I should be buying me another two HDDs and do that instead of just RAID 0 (i'm afraid of my HDD will break, damn maxtor you wouldn't dare!)...

It has to be two drives of the same model number, IIRC. I don't think you can mix 80gb drives. So depending on the motherboard, they can be any IDE Hard Drives, or SATA hard drives. Some motherboards do both, one, or none.

 

There is also JOBD raid, Jumbled Bunch of Disks, which will take as many drives as you put into it and make them into one recognizable by Windows. So its like RAID 0, but for different sizes.

[Wolf68k]

But it doesn't have to be a 300 GB HDD right?

 

Lol, I never heard of RAID 0/1. I guess I should be buying me another two HDDs and do that instead of just RAID 0 (i'm afraid of my HDD will break, damn maxtor you wouldn't dare!)...

Well it's also seen as RAID 0+1 or 1+0. It's all the same thing.

 

And no it doesn't have to be a 300GB drive, it was as I said just an example. Hey if you want to RAID 2x 20gb HDDs go for it.

 

 

@Bond

As far as I know it has to be 2 or more drives of the same size. You can use a Maxtor and a Western Digital if you want, just so long as they are the same size. But if you want to guarantee that it's going to work correctly, then like gett the perfect dual-channel mode RAM set up, yes it would be best to use 2 of the same make and model.

[ilikensrs]

It's best to use the same disk for raid, but the whole idea of jbod is that it uses any disk you want to throw into it. They don't have to be the same size.

[Colotomy Headwind]

I'd go ahead and say RAID5 is another common RAID technology you'll see used (not in home systems, of course). It's basically 3 or more disks with some parity written to each disk. If 1 fails, the other 2 can operate with parity as if the failed one was never gone, which allows you to replace the disk (and thus have all the parity information from the other 2 disks written onto it).

[fido2]

This manual here says JBOD stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks, though it also says that "one drive failure in a JBOD array will effect the whole array" which Im pretty sure is wrong. JBOD fills up one disk, then moves on to fill the next so it doesnt have any benefits like RAID0. Basic disk controller mode really.

 

Fun fact: it took me an hour to figure out that you have to disable RAID on certain interfaces to get them bootable when building my current computer which has integrated RAID on the motherboard. Turns out it wasnt set up in a way that one group of SATA headers would be used for drives for raid and one not, you have to specify which ones should be controlled by which ever controller you want. Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI.

[Colotomy Headwind]

This manual here says JBOD stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks, though it also says that "one drive failure in a JBOD array will effect the whole array" which Im pretty sure is wrong. JBOD fills up one disk, then moves on to fill the next so it doesnt have any benefits like RAID0. Basic disk controller mode really.

 

Fun fact: it took me an hour to figure out that you have to disable RAID on certain interfaces to get them bootable when building my current computer which has integrated RAID on the motherboard. Turns out it wasnt set up in a way that one group of SATA headers would be used for drives for raid and one not, you have to specify which ones should be controlled by which ever controller you want. Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI.

JBOD will be affected by a disk failure just as a RAID0 will: loss of data. JBOD to me seems like a worthless alternative to RAID0. Writing data to only ONE drive until it's full seems worthless, since it won't give you any performance difference than using those 2 or more drives seperately would. The entire point of RAID0 is performance, not redundancy. JBOD seems like a way to enlarge your e-penis by making Windows show one huge drive.

 

 

Well it's also seen as RAID 0+1 or 1+0. It's all the same thing.

RAID1+0 and 0+1 aren't the same thing, although similar. RAID1+0 is a stripe across a number of mirrored sets, while RAID0+1 is a mirrored configuration of two striped sets.

 

This is a good explanation as to why 1+0 is "better" than 0+1, although it's currently not working for me. Just Google it and look at the cached page if you can't get to the site.