Kylie Saunders said:
Iam getting to Samsung 160 Gig SATA 2 drives and iam going to raid
them in Raid 0. iam going to USE NTFS as i want to do video editing
and Video Encoding.
Just wondering what things i should NOT do so not to destoy my system.
Iam going to back everything up on another drive but just would liek
to know these things.
If your files are important, backup in multiples, even if you don't use
RAID0. Plan as if the array and the backup will fail at any moment and
simultaneously (probably won't, but...). One drive failing will destroy the
array, just as if a single drive fails in a non-RAID system.
RAID0 is not rocket science, at least not to set up. Basically, if it is an
on-board controller just enable the controller in the bios, power off,
attach the drives, reboot. After POST you will see the controller info and
a prompt to enter the controller's bios, which you must to do create the
array. Set it up as a "striped" array and select your stripe (chunk) size,
normally 64k. Since you'll be accessing large files I would set it to 128k,
if you have that option, which is where my two arrays are set.
I like to take a different approach by enabling the controller first, then
boot into Windows and set up the controller drivers before adding the
drives--but you can do it either way.
If the new volume (array) is for storage and will not house the OS, you can
boot into Windows and set up the volume like any other. The OS will see it
as a single drive of ~320gb.
If you plan on putting the OS on this array without a reinstall, you are
facing a much more complex procedure, but it can be done. I won't go into
that since you didn't ask. If you are reinstalling Windows on the new
volume, be prepared to have drivers for the controller on a floppy before
starting.
