I just purchased a second 74 GB Western Digital Raptor Hard drive. I want to set them up using Raid 0. But from what I have been reading is that you need to blank hard drives to start. I pretty much new that but that I would take a while. I would have to back up all the data that I need so if and when I do this my data will be there. The wife probably won’t like it since I will be here most of the day doing this when there is things to do around the house. Such a decision.
Chuck
Silly question…
You do have a RAID controller, right?
Carterlake,
Yes I do. They are already installed. I am just sitting deciding if I should go ahead and tackle this. I know it is not hard. #-o
Chuck
Is this on your WD PC? What’s the objective?
This is my everyday computer that has WD on it as well. If I copy the wdisplay folder to a cd I assume I can just copy it back to the hard drive. More space is one thing and a little more speed overall. But I have read a lot of articles that putting to hard drives in Raid 0 does improve your read and write speed quit a bit but that is the only noticeable things that it improves unless I am understanding it correctly.
Chuck
Right, but it doubles your chances of losing your data. 
The big thing here is backing up your data on a regular basis, which most people should be doing. I should do it more often. One of these days something is going to happen I will have nothing to recover. [-o< :-k
Yes, 0 does have a speed advantage, how much in any particular system is any interesting question. Personally I wouldn’t hassle with it unless I had a situation where disk access was choking something critical.
You’ll need to copy more than the wdisplay folder, there’s the .ini file, and the registry entry too. There is a FAQ http://discourse.weather-watch.com/t/10888 on moving to a new PC that has the all info but the .ini file is in a different location in the latest versions.
I have really nothing that it choking my hard drive right now. So would just install the new hard drive into another sata channel and use it for a second hard drive. I bought it so I could raid them together. Now I am undecided on what I am going to do.
Chuck
Can you do RAID1? That wouldn’t give you extra space or extra speed, but it would prevent data loss if you had one drive fail?
Yes I can. But don’t I have to start from scratch or just install the new drive. I am new at this raid stuff but I can follow directions pretty good. I was thinking about that. I just don’t know what to do at this point.
Chuck
I suspect it depends on the RAID controller. My experience is with high-end fibre channel type stuff where the controller costs a lot more than our PCs, so that’s not really relevant here.
In RAID1 both disks are identical copies of each other, so it’s possible that you might be able to create a new RAID1 array with the system mirroring the original disk onto the new disk.
Unless your data is particularly important (or you want to feel less guilty about doing backups!) then RAID1 is perhaps a waste of a disk!
I think it is a waste of space unless you have money to burn and have more hard drives. I know these drives cost anywhere from 130-180 us dollars. I know I have to copy a bunch of files if I want to keep what I have on my present hard drive that I am using. I also know it will take me a while to set up a raid 0. I do have an extra 60 gb hard drive I can use for a back up and upgrade later to a bigger one when I have more data than my 60 can hold. :?
Chuck
If you have two good disks available there are windows speedup tricks like moving/optimizing the swap file that it might be worth looking at.
What moving/optimizing the swap file tricks are talking about. I should just putting it off and just do it (raid 0). Driving me nuts.
Chuck
If there are more than one hard drive in a system I nearly always put the swap file on the second hard disk. (Not the disk with the OS). It does improve performance. In Windows XP right click my computer and select properties–>advanced–>performance settings–>advanced–>virtual memory change. Move the swap file to the second disk.
In regards to the RAID… I have 2 WD raptors running RAID 0 in my desktop PC where data redundacy isn’t really an issue. It does run very fast.
I also have a server which runs RAID 1 with all my data so it is backed up. Wish I had enough disks for RAID 5! However if data redundancy is an issue I would either go RAID 0 (mirroring) or use it as a second drive with the swap file and data backups.
I don’t think Raid 0 has redundancy…
Can I run my 2 raptors raid 0 and use a third drive for backup and swap file. The issue I might have is the third drive is a IDE 60 gb. Could I still use that as a backup to my two raptors running raid 0 mirroring.
Chuck
Chuck, raid 0 is not mirrored, raid 1 is mirrored, I had 2 drives in raid 0 (striping) and 1 drive failed and the syatem crashed. When I replaced the drives
I went to raid 1 (mirror). I have a 3rd drive that is not raid and I back up to it as well as an external drive.
I hope this helps… Tom
So my question is if I raid 0 striped can use the 60 gb IDE drive for a back up until I get a bigger hard drive. I have used only 12 gigs on my 74 gb raptor that I am using right now. Most of that is applications I save. I could burn those to discs and take care of a lot of that.
Chuck