2 drives vs RAID 1

T

Turbosound

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 10, 2011
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Can somone please explain to me the difference between having two internal sata 2TB HD drives, and two 2TB internal sata 2TB HD drives in RAID 1? I will be purshing two 2TB drives and don't know how I should have them. I know if I were to set up a RAID 1 my PC will show one 4TB hard drive, and the data will be split 50/50 between them. I need 4 TB of storage, 1 TB for the OS, music, games and software programs and 3TB for my Blu Ray collection (MKV's.) If I were to install the drives normaly (not in RAID) would I be able to store all my MKV's in My Videos folder in the OS?

Thanks
 
I know if I were to set up a RAID 1 my PC will show one 4TB hard drive
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No it would show up as a single 2TB volume with each disk containing a mirror of the other disk.
 
Turbosound said:
Can somone please explain to me the difference between having two internal sata 2TB HD drives, and two 2TB internal sata 2TB HD drives in RAID 1? I will be purshing two 2TB drives and don't know how I should have them. I know if I were to set up a RAID 1 my PC will show one 4TB hard drive, and the data will be split 50/50 between them. I need 4 TB of storage, 1 TB for the OS, music, games and software programs and 3TB for my Blu Ray collection (MKV's.) If I were to install the drives normaly (not in RAID) would I be able to store all my MKV's in My Videos folder in the OS?

Thanks
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RAID 1 is mirroring. You're thinking of RAID 0, or striping.

RAID 1: Your two 2 TB drives show up as 2 TB. However, under this configuration you can lose one of the drives and not lose your data.

RAID 0: Your two 2 TB drives show up as a 4 TB volume and your data is striped across the drives. If you lose one drive, all of your data is toast.

Having two separate drives AND volumes in your OS means they will each have a different letter and you will have to manually split up data between them. This configuration won't be as fast as RAID 0, but if you lose a drive you will only lose the data on that drive.
 
Yeah I think the OP meant raid 0....but I am not sure.....?
 
Yeah I think so. Sounds like what he really wants is a bootable spanned volume. I dunno how you do that without hardware.
 
I'm sorry I meant RAID 0. If I want to store all my .MKV files in users/me/myvideos folder what should I do?
 
Let's say I don't use RAID 0 and install the OS on the C drive. Then if I were to put all the .mkv's on the other (E) drive, will I be able to store them in the "my video's" folder in Windows 7?
 
You can tell windows that you want my video to be on that drive, but is that really necessary ? You can have a shortcut to your drive.

Also, it's ineffective to have a 2TB just for the OS, and well, at current prices, that's really bad.

Finally, you might want to think about a backup solution in case something happens. For example an external drive where to copy your precious data and keep on a shelf.
 
One other option, if you have an intel chipset (and depending on how new it is), would be to use what they call Matrix Raid or RST Matrix RAID. It would allow you to have RAID0 on 1/2 the physical drives, and RAID1 on 1/2 the physical drives. It would yield you a 2TB boot RAID0 partition striped across both drives, and a 1TB RAID1 partition mirrored across both drives. Kind of like having your cake and eating it too, it is a compromise between the two options.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/chpsts/imsm
 
mwroobel said:
One other option, if you have an intel chipset (and depending on how new it is), would be to use what they call Matrix Raid or RST Matrix RAID. It would allow you to have RAID0 on 1/2 the physical drives, and RAID1 on 1/2 the physical drives. It would yield you a 2TB boot RAID0 partition striped across both drives, and a 1TB RAID1 partition mirrored across both drives. Kind of like having your cake and eating it too, it is a compromise between the two options.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/chpsts/imsm
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Nice idea, but I would not recommend this at all, having two different levels of RAID on the same two drives would hinder performance more than help, especially if both arrays were being utilized at the same time. As long as RAID 1 is used on one of the arrays however, data insurance should not be an issue, you just won't get the full 2TB of storage space.
 
Thanks for the repsonses, if I decide not to setup a RAID 0 I would want all the .mkv's on just one of the drives. Mabey 1TB for the OS, music, pictures, games and software and then a 2TB drive for all the .mkv's. I think a 2TB drive would hold around 60 Blu Ray titles @30GB each, however I would like to be able to have 100 titles someday. What I don't understand is how I would acess the .mkv's being on the other drive in windows, will I be able to store them in the users/me/my videos folder or will I have to go into my computer and open the other drive and store them all in there? I have never had two drives before so there is alot that I don't understand. Whats nice about having a RAID 0 is that everything would show up on the same drive, but I have no idea how to set it up and wonder if it's neccessary. I wish I could just put one 4TB drive in my PC.
 
Frankly, with such noobish level, please, don't touch at RAID, it will be a disaster. Are you sure you'll even be able to install the drives at all ? We can help, but your questions are, well, a bit frightening.

4TB drives were supposed to be soon on the market, but now with the situation in Thailand, we'll see.
 
A bit frightening? I'm just asking what the difference would be when accessing the .mkv's in windows. Yes, I know how to install and format the drives in NTFS, but I have never setup a RAID configuration. Even if a 4TB drive was released my PC couldn't handle it, I have a Dell XPS with a nforce 650i chipset. My BIOS is up to date, but Dell told me that a 1.5TB drive is the maxium capacity that is supported, and a 2TB drive might not work.
 
If you are using windows 7 you can just add the 'videos' folder on your d drive to the 'videos' library. You can even set it to be the default save location.

That's how I keep all of my documents/pictures/music/videos on my storage drive and off of my SSD.
 
If you want stripe, at least go raid 5. 3 drives will give you 2 drives worth of space. If one drive fails you replace it and let it rebuild, and you don't lose anything.

With the price of hard drives (before the flood, that is) there is no reason not to. Even just 1TB is a lot of data, so 3 1TB drives in raid 5 gives you 2TB worth of redundant space. You can rest assured that data is relatively safe from a drive failure. You still need backups in case of accidental delete, corruption etc...

Only place I'd use raid 0 is if it's for very temporary data, and I need massive space and/or performance.

And before you touch raid, you'll want to read up on it. There's hardware, software, and different variations of those. So you'll want to decide on how you want to do it, and know about the levels and so on.
 
RAID 5 is great for smaller drives but if you value the data it might not be the best choice.
 
Turbosound said:
I'm sorry I meant RAID 0. If I want to store all my .MKV files in users/me/myvideos folder what should I do?
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you can just mount the second drive as a folder on your main drive...so instead of d:\ your hard drive could just be any folder
 
Still better than 0. With raid 5 you can afford to lose one drive. 6 is even better (with more drives) as you can lose two. Then there's always raid 51 and 61, and other exotic configurations. :p
 
Eickst said:
If you are using windows 7 you can just add the 'videos' folder on your d drive to the 'videos' library. You can even set it to be the default save location.

This sounds like a good and simple idea, but what do you mean your ssd?
I'm not interested in RAID 5 or any other ones just RAID 0, I will have everything backed up on a portable hard drive.
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Turbosound said:
Eickst said:
If you are using windows 7 you can just add the 'videos' folder on your d drive to the 'videos' library. You can even set it to be the default save location.

This sounds like a good and simple idea, but what do you mean your ssd?
I'm not interested in RAID 5 or any other ones just RAID 0, I will have everything backed up on a portable hard drive.
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I use an SSD for my OS and games and store everything else on my storage drive (d drive)
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If I decide not to go with RAID 0, would it be better to have one 3TB drive or one 1TB drive and one 2TB drive? I don't know if it makes a difference in terms of performace or stability. I would rather have the one 3TB and just put everything on that and be done with it. Doe's anyone know if a nforce 650i can support a 3TD drive?

Thanks
 
First you need 4TB and now you need 3TB?

Which is it?

Doe's anyone know if a nforce 650i can support a 3TD drive?
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Doesn't look like it.

This forum post leads me to believe it's not.

Looks like there may be a workaround but who knows? :)

Sorry OP.
 
Well I think I have decided to go with RAID0, to have everything appear in the same location. Like I mentioned I would like to have a collection of 100 blu ray titles someday which would require around 3TB. Along with the OS, progams, music and games that would total around 3.5TD. I think my chipset can support a maxium of 2TB, so if I get two 2TB drives I can set them up for RAID0 to have a toal of 4TB and all my data will be in one location. If not I would get two 1.5TB and only have 60 or so Blu Ray titles. I don't like the idea of getting a SSD for everyting else but the mkv's. If my pc could support a 4TB drive and they were available I would do that and not setup RAID0.
 
Hope you have a backup with that array, RAID0 is not to be trusted without an outside backup source.
 
Yes, I plan on backing up everything to a 3 or 4TB external hard drive. Which really is just my .wav and .mkv files.
 
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