Total noob question... read, laugh, but please answer :)

[dbaldus]

So I'm considering picking up another 160GB drive to go RAID, but have a quick question.

Do my drives need to be identical to have a RAID setup? I will be running one Maxtor 160GB IDE ATA133 drive and a Seagate Barracuda 160Gb SATA drive (the new one, if I so choose to purchase). Will this work or not? What options will I have for RAID? Just 0, 1, and 0+1?

Thanks!

[unhappy_mage]

Most raid controllers don't support arrays across multiple types of disks, and generally it doesn't give much improvement over a single disk. It can be done with Windows using Dynamic Disks, but I wouldn't recommend that.

You'd be able to do raid 0 or 1, but 0+1 takes 4 disks. You're probably thinking of Intel's Matrix Raid technology, which does raid 0 with half the capacity of the disk, and raid 1 with the other. Not a good idea, by the way - if you even touch one half of the array while you're doing something with the other half, you have to seek at least one disk an entire halfway across the disk, while the other probably sits by idle. That doesn't lead to "fast".

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)