hard-drives

[Ted Striker]

Yeah that's the tradeoff you have when you use a RAID1. You lose half of the space but you get data protection.

There is another RAID called RAID5 where you actually can combine the space and get data protection, but you need 3 drives and that's probably overkill for a desktop.

[Graag]

I actually have 3 20GB HDDs at the moment, but only run two as I don't have the space for the third!

But RAID 5 is an intriuing option. Or at least would be if I had a lot more money lying around.

I'm just happy I can finally do a bit of video editing

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Huh,, I wish that I could buy a 200GB hard drive, with all the downloads of the net and movies etc... my 80 GB hdd (the same as yours is already 45 GB full after only three months when I reformatted the last time +games and similar. Can't believe this is happening to me .. that I want an even bigger HDD. At least this 80 GB is kind of a minimum that still is OK. 40 GB would clearly be to little.

I will have to clean it though and burn all the stuff on CD's as an alternative even though it is neater when you have it all on HDD. (takes less time to burn for friends or play, etc... if it sits on HDD).

I think I will wait until the HDD manufacturers start producing HDDD's with 80 GB per platter and 160 GB drives will cost under 100 £. That will be the time for another one.

[Edan]

Originally posted by Graag
But RAID 5 is an intriuing option.

In case anyone is interested, here's how raid 0 and 5 work.

In raid 0, the data is striped across 2 or more disks of the same size. Which means that the 2 or more disks are seen as one giant disk 3 times the size of one disk, and the data, when written, gets written accross all three disks, with the first part of the data getting written on the first disk, the next part on the second disk, and so on, until youve finished all the disks and returned to the first disk. It's like having a book written accross 2 or more books, where the first letter in the book is in the first book, the second is in the second book, and so on. This offers no backup protection (indeed, if any single disk dies, *all* the information on all the disks is gone - which means there's a greater chance of failure, since you now have more disks that can potentially fail), but it does allow for bigger partitions (ie, you could buy 3 80gb drives and have a 240 gb single partition, which would be much cheaper than buying a single drive thats 240 gb ) and it also can offer some performance increase (since it's writing to 2 or more disks, it can write quicker since, to some extent, they can be writing at the same time in effect. Although you don't get a 2x speed increase, I don't think).

Raid 5 works simmilar to Raid 0, with 3 or more disks striped. The last disk in the raid, however, is a parity disk, that writes duplicate information (which means the performance increase isn't as much as Raid 0, but there's still some). If one of the drives were to fail, the raid software would be able to use the parity disk to compute what the information in the dead drive was - although that means a potentially big preformance loss. If you were to lose 2 disks, though, you would lose all the information - although it's rare that 2 disks would go at the same time.

Raid 10 and 50 are combinations of the various raid schemes. There are a few more raid schemes that are rarely, if ever, used.

[Edan]

Originally posted by Ted Striker Okay, say you have your RAID1 up and running. Your primary drive fails!

Normally you would be screwed at this point, your system would shut down, and you would lose all your data. But with a RAID1, it will automatically switch to the backup drive, which is an exact copy of the primary drive. Your system will continue to run without interrption, and all data is saved.

Something else to point out - this only works if it's a hardware problem. If it were software-related or user mistake (ie, you deleted your registry or your windows directory or data that you wanted a backup of ), the same mistake would be duplicated on your second drive

[Ted Striker]

Correct.

[alva]

for all you HD goeroe's

Since there many HD specialists here, I gonna jump in ask a question too
I recently bought a new MOBO
aopenAK-77 8X max

http://www.aopen.nl/products/mb/AK77-8XMax.htm

I have 3 ide channels on the MOBO, but only two of them show up in both BIOS and Windows (XP),
WHY???
AFAIK this MOBO does not have a RAID function..
so do I need special software/drivers or something?

[Ted Striker]

I can't get the image on their webpage to show up and it doesn't show up here either.

Could that third slot be a floppy connector?

OR

It only shows two controllers:

Integrated ATA133 Controller
Promise ATA133 and Serial ATA Control Chip

The second one handles 2 kinds of connections but I thought the serial ATA connector doesn't look like normal ATA connector?

[alva]

not a floppy,
the serial connector is located higher up.

I'm pretty sure it's an IDE channel, the cables fit

hmm, don't pictures show up?
Could you try this one?

http://club.aopen.com.tw/pss/largeview.asp?modelname=AK77-8X%20Max&img=http://english.aopen.com.tw/products/mb/images/flash/ak77-8xmax.swf

it's a flash image

[Ted Striker]

Okay I see it now. That's a pretty cool magnifying glass feature on that flash.

My guess is that those two slots on the right are connected to the same controller? Which controller is connected to those two slots? Once we know that we can probably do some more investigation.

I'm sure you checked this, but in your BIOS settings is there a switch to turn on the other slot?

[alva]

There is
channel 0 (yellow right down)
channel 1 (yellow right up * 0&1 could be the other way around, but I don't think so)
and surprisingly channel 2 (yellow left)

the first two each can have a master and slave combo (normal stuff )
the third one AFAIK doesn't do anything..
I checked my BIOS thouroughly(sp?) and nothing indicated anything like that.
Maybe I should check it again, it's quite awhile since I've done so.

It is a cool use of flash isn't :cool

Could this whole thing have anything to do with 'striping'?? hmm, that is a term used alongside RAID isn't it?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
The single drive system has worked well for most people, as long as you are diligent in backing up your important work. In my case, I have been too lazy sometimes to make sure I have backups, so I like to have something that is automatic, which is the beauty of a RAID1.

You could have a tape drive and an archival program (say, CA Arcserve) running in the background that is scheduled to do incremental backups. All you need is to remember to rotate the tapes.

Of course, this is going to be more expensive than an IDE RAID.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Edan
Something else to point out - this only works if it's a hardware problem. If it were software-related or user mistake (ie, you deleted your registry or your windows directory or data that you wanted a backup of ), the same mistake would be duplicated on your second drive

That's why enterprise systems have tape backups in additional to RAID drives.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by alva
There is
channel 0 (yellow right down)
channel 1 (yellow right up * 0&1 could be the other way around, but I don't think so)
and surprisingly channel 2 (yellow left)

the first two each can have a master and slave combo (normal stuff )
the third one AFAIK doesn't do anything..
I checked my BIOS thouroughly(sp?) and nothing indicated anything like that.
Maybe I should check it again, it's quite awhile since I've done so.

It is a cool use of flash isn't :cool

Could this whole thing have anything to do with 'striping'?? hmm, that is a term used alongside RAID isn't it?

It is certainly possible that the two on the right are for a RAID, though I don't see any mention of RAID on your motherboard specs anywhere.

I know Promise is the most popular maker of onboard RAID chips for the desktop.

[Urban Ranger]

IIRC, the Promise chip is an IDE RAID controller. Check your BIOS for RAID options.

Edit: Nevermind, Promise makes a whole range of controllers. Can you list the model number of the controller chip?