RAID?

[AirPower4ever]

So I am new to RAID and I wanted to get some direction. I have read the different RAID's and I seem to only fit into 1 or 2 of them. Background, current drives are use for operating system, gaming (BF2142, Modern Warfare, and the like), music library and pictures (ex-Air Force guy, gotta love the airplane pics) and copies of apps so if I lose my system I can always get them back via my back up. I just keep 2 copies of everything.

I have 2 drives, drive C has the OS, games and the apps. Drive D has my music files, my pics and copies of programs in case I need to reinstall, like HD Tune, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, Real Temp, etc.

So I am bored and I want to mess around with RAID. With what I just mentioned, what would be a good RAID level? I do understand that RAID is not meant as a replacement of backing up. I just want to play around and see if performance is really an eye opener.

Current system is;
Core I7 920, D0
Asus P6T Deluxe V2
2 hard drives - Seagate 160GB each (C: drive-used up only 40% of drive, D: drive used up only 27%, but growing)

Case Antec 900
Windows XP Pro SP2

In these forums I read that gaming will be better, but better than what? So I wanted to see it for myself. Any recommendations? Should I buy some new hard drives to try this out?

Again, I am just playing with this, but if it gives greater performance all around for me, I might just stick to it. An early thanks to people who respond.

 

[AirPower4ever]

I just realized I left off SSD's. From my prospective (and consumer experience) I'll wait on these. We consumers never get the best quality, we always get the down version

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

As far as I'm aware, only RAID1 and RAID0 allow for 2-drive arrays. RAID1 is also known as mirroring; it's basically what it says it is, one drive's contents are mirrored onto the other to protect data in case of a hard drive failure. I doubt this is what you want, since your drives are too small and quite full to do this.

RAID0 is also known as striping, when the data is split into blocks and written alternately to different drives. Theoretically this should double read/write performance; I don't think they affect random read/writes or access times as much though. This does, however, make your data more prone to loss, since on the failure of one drive the data's as good as gone.

I think what you could do is just buy a better, bigger hard drive. Current generation hard drives should offer much better performance, lower power consumption, and give you the space you need for RAID1.

 

[Dangman]

2 hard drives - Seagate 160GB each (C: drive-used up only 40% of drive, D: drive used up only 27%, but growing)

First and foremost, just about any new single platter drive will provide better performance than either Seagate 160GB drive. Even if those Seagate 160GB drives were in RAID 0, it would still be outperformed by many newer drives.

In these forums I read that gaming will be better, but better than what? So I wanted to see it for myself. Any recommendations? Should I buy some new hard drives to try this out?

In general, RAID 0 will speed up load times for games. That's pretty much it. It wouldn't increase FPS in games. I'd recommend just getting a single new Samsung F3 drive which will provide a big increase in performance by itself:
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

So I am bored and I want to mess around with RAID. With what I just mentioned, what would be a good RAID level? I do understand that RAID is not meant as a replacement of backing up. I just want to play around and see if performance is really an eye opener.

If a single Samsung F3 drive isn't enough, go with a second for RAID 0. If you want uptime (uptime != backup), go with RAID 1.

 

[Blue Fox]

As far as I'm aware, only RAID1 and RAID0 allow for 2-drive arrays. RAID1 is also known as mirroring; it's basically what it says it is, one drive's contents are mirrored onto the other to protect data in case of a hard drive failure. I doubt this is what you want, since your drives are too small and quite full to do this.

You can have as many drives as you want in any RAID level as long as you meet the required minimum number of drives.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

You can have as many drives as you want in any RAID level as long as you meet the required minimum number of drives.

Yes. I'm aware of that, thank you very much. However, the OP only has 2 drives. Therefore RAID 5, 6, or 1+0 are out of the question. Which was the effect of my first sentence. With the 2 drives he has, his only options are RAID 1 and RAID 0.

 

[Blue Fox]

Yes. I'm aware of that, thank you very much. However, the OP only has 2 drives. Therefore RAID 5, 6, or 1+0 are out of the question. Which was the effect of my first sentence. With the 2 drives he has, his only options are RAID 1 and RAID 0.

Kinda transposed the location of 'only' when reading your post.

 

[AirPower4ever]

Would using the NCQ be worth using in the Samsung or is it not that big of a boost?