RAID and non-RAID partitions on 2 drives possible?

[FlamingBee]

I have two IDE drives which I want to put into RAID 0, but they are of different sizes. They are both the same manufacturer (Maxtor) and both have the same speed and Cache i think (5400rpm, 2mb cache) but one is 60gb and the other is 40gb. What i want to know Is it possible to make a 20gb partition on the 60GB drives and then RAID the 40gb partition on the 60gb drive with the 40gb other drive?

[Cardboard Hammer]

Software, yes... (Use XP Pro (NOT XP Home) with dynamic disks and you can do RAID 0 (maybe 1 as well, not sure), or you could use Linux).

Hardware... maybe, but I doubt there's a currently available, reasonably priced solution.

[FlamingBee]

Ah right, OK thanks very much. Since I would have to do it software-based would I still see a performance increase?

[dandragonrage]

I recommend staying FAR away from dynamic disks. You'll be much better off with hardware RAID and just getting another drive that you don't RAID if you don't want it running in RAID. Yes, there would be a performance increase, but it's not worth it IMO.

[Philip]

Since I would have to do it software-based would I still see a performance increase?

Only if your working with large files. Video editing is the best use for Raid 0. For every day use Raid 0 is not the best setup.

The two drives you are wanting to use are old and slow. A newer single drive will most likely give better performance than a Raid setup will on those drives Raided. Software Raid will eat up even more CPU cycles that a IDE Raid will.

[FlamingBee]

Alright, thanks very much everyone for your responses. I'll probably leave it as is for the moment and set up a SATA Hardware RAID 0 in the future when I upgrade drives. Once again thanks very much guys (and gals).