How to create a Software RAID

[[flAsh]]

Is software raid through windows xp better than hardware raid???how to create software raid in windows xp and linux (fedora core 1/2)???

is there any prformance increase whencompared to simple HDD's performance???

one more question in nforce3/4 mobo one can combine a PATA HDD and a SATA HDD in RAID array. I did the same by taking out my old pc's PATA HDD which had 40GB space and my SATA HDD has 120GB space. but when i combined them in raid 0 (ie stripping mode) the raid array's space reduced to 80GB.why this happened???

[JAK]

Originally Posted by [flAsh

]Is software raid through windows xp better than hardware raid???how to create software raid in windows xp and linux (fedora core 1/2)???

is there any prformance increase whencompared to simple HDD's performance???

one more question in nforce3/4 mobo one can combine a PATA HDD and a SATA HDD in RAID array. I did the same by taking out my old pc's PATA HDD which had 40GB space and my SATA HDD has 120GB space. but when i combined them in raid 0 (ie stripping mode) the raid array's space reduced to 80GB.why this happened???

hmm..
Well u could refer to guide by " deXter" reg. creating software raid(I think I saw it somewher in the forum...u'll find it in the forum) or Gooooooooooooogle it....

reg. the performance issue software raid is better then normal HDD but is not as good as the Hardware Raid's performance(unless u have a very fast processor). In Hardware Raid ur OS sees the 2 or more HDD's as 1 Drive,while in software raid ur OS configures itself to use the 2 drives as 1. If u r using CPU intensive applications then Software Raid may comsume valuable system resources which may inturn hamper system performance, Hardware raid controllers impliment the Raid regime completely independent of the CPU therefore have no impact on the CPu's performance.

Reg. ur 3rd question The total space that is available after setting HDD's is hardware raid is twice that of the smallest HDD. All the remaining space available on the larger disk is left unused.

[[flAsh]]

than a lot 4 the info JAK.

[pradeep_chauhan]

Adding to it the nforce 4 offers you raid that is transparent across sata and pata disks also there is no wastage of space if you create raid volumes taht do not cover the full disk as in my case i have a 160GB sata and a 200GB sata so i have 4x 30 partitions as raid rest of the space on the 200GB disk is a normal volume. Raid (HW) does cause a increase in disk throughput but as a whole the effect is seen mainly in disk intensive tasks otherwise a slight overhead is felt even in normal operations.