WWII said:
I've built many PCs, but never a RAID configuration. Am I correct in
assuming that two 40GB HDs in a RAID 0 configuration will have a total
capacity of 80GB (less some overhead)? Also what performance can I expect
from a S-ATA RAID 0 configuration compared to two separate IDE drives?
yes, raid 0 adds the drives together, raid 1 mirrors them.
generally speaking, raid 0 boosts performance by about 60%. But it's
risky, since if one drive fails then you've lost everything, so be sure to
keep a backup or ghost image. SATA raid 0 is slightly better than PATA
raid 0, but it all really depends on the controller. If you're talking
SATA via intel's new 865/875 chipsets, they do perform slightly better
than add-in card controllers. BTW, all of these controlers are heavily
dependent on the software in their drivers (they're often called software
raid solutions), and they do use up cpu overhead, often in the 10-15%
range. With a fast processor it's not really an issue tho.
[FWIW, I have a new 865/ICH5R SATA raid 0 setup, and it is very fast, much
faster than old machine w/ PATA-100. speeding up the disk has a large
impact on overall system speed.]
