where to put a new HDD

[anuraag_01]

i am running a system with a 5400rpm 40gb seagate hdd on the primary ide and an lg dvd/cd-rw combo on the secondry ide channel. i am gonna buy another hdd( most probably a seagate 80gb 7200rpm). what should be the ideal setup for the three devices?

consider the following options:

1) both the hdds on the primary and the dvd on secondry?

2) the new hdd on primary and the dvd and old hdd on secondry?( is it possible??)

i need to get the new hdd run at max performance.

[club_pranay]

i suggest
Primary Master-----Seagate 80gb 7200rpm*
Primary Slave------Seagate 40gb 5400rpm
Secondary Master--LG DVD/CDrw combo
Secondary Slave---none

*install the oftenly used OS here

[anuraag_01]

thanks dude.....

[magnet]

can u giv links with images showing how to connect 2 disk or in raid form?????

[AlienTech]

Remember, you cant mix and match peripherals with different speeds. They regularly cause problems. IE using an ATA 5 device with ATA 3 one would make the ATA 5 device use the slower ATA 3 speeds. So 1st rule is use same manufacturer, same speed devices and same type of devices. With slower speeds this is not much of a problem. But with faster ones, data corruption is a possibility.

Also if the devices do not work properly, try swapping the master/slave. IE make the slave the master and vice versa. But win XP has another problem where it slows down devices causing problems and only way to fix it is tedious, by removing the device driver and reinstalling it.

[AlienTech]

There are many levels of RAID. You can RAID drives to give more space IE hook 2, 40G drives to get 80G. This ends up being faster since it will write to 2 drives at the same time (depending). OR you can hook 2, 40G drives as redudent raid system where it writes the same data to 2 drives at the same time which ends up being slower (depends). OR you can hook 4, 40G drives to give you 80G and redudant fault tolerence which ends up faster than a single drive but slower than 2 drives....

So RAID itself means nothing until you say what you want to use it for.

also its not the connection that makes the raid system but the software. windows XP/NT etc have it built into the software while with DOS etc you need a special controller with the raid operating system. You get some very expensive disk controllers to do this. I seen raid controllers costing 1000's of US$...

[digen]

Originally Posted by AlienTech

There are many levels of RAID. You can RAID drives to give more space IE hook 2, 40G drives to get 80G.

Dude can you tell me which RAID level is that allows you to like 40gig + 40gig= 1 big 80 gig RAID array ?

[drvarunmehta]

Originally Posted by digen

Dude can you tell me which RAID level is that allows you to like 40gig + 40gig= 1 big 80 gig RAID array ?

RAID-0

Anyways RAID is cr@p for home users. Unless you frequently use software that specially utilises RAID, there will only be a negligible increase in performance. Look at this test conducted by Anandtech and you will see that a RAID setup is worthless for home users.

Originally Posted by Anandtech

If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.
Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

Source http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101

[pradeep_chauhan]

A hardware implimentation of RAID 0 is a big boost in speed as all the throughputs are almost doubled the loadup time and any other disk related activity is real fast. The only problem is that non of the onboard raid solutions ia a true hardware raid setup all are software raid implimentations that steal cpu time to emulate raid (linux is very good at catching this anyway thats a diffrent story) so if one gets a HW raid card and say puts it in a pci-e slot the results will be amazing.

[digen]

@drvarunmehta
I got sorta confused & though otherwise.lol Maybe I need to read up all through RAID again
I'm on RAID 0 right now with 2 seagate barracudas 20gig on a PCI RAID Controller Card.
The perfrmance boost is hardly noticeable during normal operations.
I've got to test it with some benchmarks or some hard drive stress testing utilities.

[pradeep_chauhan]

digin
Sorry to break the "BAD" news your card too is not a true hardware raid card so please do not expect wonders. Any way have fun.

[mohit]

@pradeep_chauhan
can u gimme some details about a true hardware raid card which will support true raid 0 and gimme a real big boost ? also isnt there a single board out there which has true onboard raid 0 support ? and approx. how much do such pci-e cards cost and can u provide links to some good guides on setting up a raid 0 system ? thanx in advance.

[pradeep_chauhan]

sure
The best raid cards are made by adaptec. check out there web site for details. i found this a pcix card search for an pcie its also there
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/pro...erial+ATA+RAID

[digen]

Yeah major thats true.
I had a link explaining the real aspect of a true hardware raid controller card & the one which I have right now.
Let me search a bit in my bookmarks folder & post it here.

[mohit]

@pradeep_chauhan
check this link and suggest what will be good for me,
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/pro...erial+ATA+RAID

i having an intel orig d915 board and my config is on my siggy. i am planning to buy 2 new seagate 80 gb sata n.c.q hdd's and main purpose will be gaming and editing. plz suggest wht will be the best for me as i could not figure out a thing there. i will then post an enquiry to neoteric who are the autho. distributors for adaptec in india for the pricing and availability. thanx a ton. also i think my board is based on the pci-e architecture so ill go for pci-x card. what do u suggest ?