Can someone explain how to enable RAID and what purpose it has?

[clocker]

For the home user only RAID0 and RAID1 are really applicable and the choice between them really boils down to speed (R0) or security(R1).

Typically, I would think that security is more easily addressed through backup to disk (CD or DVD) or, given the decreasing costs, an external drive, rather than implementing a RAID1 array.

RAID0 is controversial as the risk of data loss is multiplied by the number of drives in the array and many dispute the advantages of the perceived speed gain.

Personally, I found RAID0 to be undeniably faster and the entire implementation process was an interesting learning experience.
That said, I admit I no longer use it- primarily due to noise considerations.
With R0 you always have two (at least) drives grinding away and my focus of late has been silence above all else. Hence my love of the iRAM.

This will probably change when I move to the new Intel platform (whenever than might happen) which features "Matrix RAID".
I've seen absolutely amazing results using Raptors in the matrix and would find it difficult to resist at least trying it out.

[1Bullet]

mr. nails the users that you are are running a motherboard that supports serial ATA hard drives (-HDD- *I am tired of typing harddrive). When windows starts its install, it will prompt you to load a raid driver (F6) just before set up begins. Since windows is doesn't understand raid (at this time) and if you do not load the raid driver it may have 3 different out comes:
1) windows does not detect HDD
2) windows detects HDD but see only 88 Gb and only formats the 88 gb even though your HDD 320 GB. This can be corrected through computer mangement in administator tools but instal is still screwwd up.
3) windows installs the wrong drivers and your Serial ATA (SATA)hard drive actually runs as with an IDE controller rather than a SATA controller.When this happens anything goes. Lots irq conflict issues. Sound card loads above or directly below your video card. Problem, no sound or poor graghic card performance. I have seen set ups were windows loads a raid driver after your set up to control the IDE optical drives, problem may not read or may not burn and it may not be both. (how come I get so many coasters my DVD burner is junk , take it back it under warranty, how many times have you seen that posted.) or Windows doesn't see optical drive after install, but it installed Windows from it.This was on a SIS chipset for you non believers.
During setup of Windows the only way to load the raid driver is by using a floppy. Many people do not do this and can not figure out why the pc is not functioning properly.You noticed I did not say it wouldn't run. Windows will not be able to correct any of the problems, as it created all of your problems.

If you need 4 hard drives and 2 DVD burners (optical drives).
2 HDD's would be SATA, 2 HDD's would be IDE , 1 Master and 1 Slave, your otical drives would be installed on your secondary IDE ,with 1 master and 1 slave. I know that is pretty basic but gets my point across.
Now this set up will gain you 2 additional drives that you would not have if you were not using SATA.
SATA drives will will also increase you transfer rate, but the average user will never use or take advantage of the benifit. In short they use it it for benchmarking and bragging rights.(My computer is better than yours)-bad example.

Now if you wanted your operating system(windows) on your primary SATA controller and Windows does not see it, Windows will now install on your Primary IDE controlled HDD, Not quite what you were looking for.If you continued with the setup Your SATA harddrives would have to be formatted and partitioned after you set up. Windows is now NOT set up on the drive you wanted. This may give you problems if you are trying to set up a PC with multi boot operating systems. Windows 2000, Xp, Vista. You would want you largest and fastest drive for vista , The next largest and fastest for XP. and so on. But you will start your install with Windows 2000 and it loading onto the wrong HDD all because you didn't load the raid driver.

Now I am going to throw another loop at you, as someone else posted about controllers(I wanted to stay awy from this) You can also purchace Raid controllers that plug into you IDE slots, But we are not going their right now.

[1Bullet]

Now I feel I have to clarify some points, I let Windows load drivers but I also check device manger and open everything up to make sure it actually did load the right driver. Just because there is no yellow ?, doesn't mean windows loaded the right driver. The yellow ? just means Windows doesn't know what it is.

[mr. nails]

ok, hopefully one last no0b question. how to make it work? for instance: raid 0? hook up 2 sata hdd's on mb, install raid drivers, go into bios and enable raid 0? it will say raid 0 in bios? that easy? or u have to install hdd's a certain way? i understand if i were to just buy a couple hdd's and do it myself i'd know the answer to this, but i just want to get all curiosity out of the way and just be aware of what i have to do. thank all u guys for ur support in helping me understand something as old as this technology, but i just never advanced to this. thx.

i use raid 0 for the example cuz i'm thinking of using 2 250gb hdd's in raid 0 for my os and games and then 1 500gb for storage. sounds ideal for me. almost 1TB. lol, maybe a 750gb for storage for my bragging rights. lol.

[lynx]

The way you get in to raid setup depends on the type of raid controller.

The usual steps are something like this:

Enable raid in bios (otherwise it's just a SATA or IDE controller)
Reboot
Enter the raid setup which now appears (usually a key combination like <Ctrl>+S)
Select the type of raid you want *** and tell it to go and build the raid array.

*** On some controllers you can also divide the raid into several "drives" at this point. These are the drives that the system sees, not the physical drives they are mounted on. For example, if you've got a pair of 250GB drives mirrored, the maximum capacity is 250GB but you might want that to appear as a 50GB drive and a 200GB drive. These "drives" can then be partitioned and formatted just like any other drive.

One thing to watch out for. Depending on the age of your motherboard, enabling raid can make some of your sata ports invisible. For example the Intel ICH6 controller can handle 6 drives in "Native" mode - 2 IDE and 4 SATA. But when you enable raid on the SATA drives it can only handle 2 IDE drives and 2 SATA drives. It isn't common now, but it's worth checking. If only we'd known that at work a month ago.

[clocker]

ok, hopefully one last no0b question. how to make it work? for instance: raid 0? hook up 2 sata hdd's on mb, install raid drivers, go into bios and enable raid 0? it will say raid 0 in bios?

No, it won't say RAID0.
Most likely it will ask if you want to "stripe" the drives (RAID0) or "mirror" them (RAID1).
If you stripe them you will also have the option of specifying the size of the stripe. You can either perform multiple test installs on the different stripe size options (options should range from 8MB to 256MB, IIRC) and then benchmark to see which size works best for you, or just randomly pick a size, say 64MB, and just go with it. Your average file size is what matters here, but the differences between stripe size performance are minimal for most users.

[mr. nails]

If you stripe them you will also have the option of specifying the size of the stripe. You can either perform multiple test installs on the different stripe size options (options should range from 8MB to 256MB, IIRC) and then benchmark to see which size works best for you, or just randomly pick a size, say 64MB, and just go with it. Your average file size is what matters here, but the differences between stripe size performance are minimal for most users.

w0w, that just got more complicated. i was hoping for "set to raid 0" command or something. now, u throw stripe size option my way. hum... more research.

[clocker]

It ain't that big a deal really.
If you have an nF4 chipset (my personal favorite as it easily outperforms the SI RAID many boards also include), you simply set it to "stripe", choose which drives you want included in the array and then leave the stripe size on "optimal" (which is the default option).

Make your life even easier by creating a custom nLite install disk and slipstream your drivers into it...this eliminates the F6 dance and is a significantly faster install (my rig takes @12 minutes-start to finish- till I'm on the desktop, ready to go).

[1Bullet]

Ok now where going to be going over mr nails head.

Do you really need raid on you pc Mr Nails?

Do you have data that there is no way to back up?

Do you use your pc for Business?

If you want raid on you pc ,just so you have it. Its kind of a waste, If you don't understand what you are doing.

My suggestion is to hookup with A network admin hopefully you know one and have him varify what hardware you have or what you will need to purchase.

Have him/her install everything and have you watch.

Failing this, go to your library and get a Network + book this is where I would start there. Just read up on raid.

I am not trying to be mean, but I think your results based on what the rest of us have been explaining is just going to get you in trouble.

[lynx]

Ok now where going to be going over mr nails head.

Do you really need raid on you pc Mr Nails?

Do you have data that there is no way to back up?

Do you use your pc for Business?

If you want raid on you pc ,just so you have it. Its kind of a waste, If you don't understand what you are doing.

My suggestion is to hookup with A network admin hopefully you know one and have him varify what hardware you have or what you will need to purchase.

Have him/her install everything and have you watch.

Failing this, go to your library and get a Network + book this is where I would start there. Just read up on raid.

I am not trying to be mean, but I think your results based on what the rest of us have been explaining is just going to get you in trouble.

I use raid configurations commercially all the time, but for home installations I'd steer well clear of it.

When everything is ok it's good, though I doubt you will often see much benefit. When it goes wrong you are in nightmare city, because you just don't have the resources to recover the situation.