New to RAID

[Dazed66]

I been toying with the idea of purchasing a small SATA drive to install only my OS on then buying a RAID controller and 2-4 other drives to set in RAID to install my apps and put all my music, vid, data, etc on.

If I understand what i have read correctly I can move the controller and RAID drives to another computer or if I had to reinstall my OS, all my data would be preserved.

Am I understanding this correctly? if so I could use some recommendations on controller cards, type of RAID setup, etc.

 

[XS Janus]

With a hardware you could move your array to another system or if this one fails and you have to change mobos.

But I wouldn't put any apps or installs on the array. Just storage.
Apps wouldn't survive the move anyway. And there are no benefits to doing it that way anyway.

Areca, 3ware, Adaptec are among the top rated vendors. As for which particular model, you will have to tell us what would you like to build and for what purpose.

 

[Dazed66]

I play mostly MMOs, have a few gigs of MP3s, video, and a lot of downloaded apps/drivers I keep around so I don't spend time looking for them if I do a reformat.
My thought process on the apps applied to games like WoW, GW, EQ, etc. They don't need any reg markers to work and patching them from a clean install takes literally hours.

I kinda hoped that a RAID setup that i could migrate from setup to setup would maybe enable me to say change a mobo and not need to completely reinstall everything.

 

[ALL4AMD]

I play mostly MMOs, have a few gigs of MP3s, video, and a lot of downloaded apps/drivers I keep around so I don't spend time looking for them if I do a reformat.
My thought process on the apps applied to games like WoW, GW, EQ, etc. They don't need any reg markers to work and patching them from a clean install takes literally hours.

I kinda hoped that a RAID setup that i could migrate from setup to setup would maybe enable me to say change a mobo and not need to completely reinstall everything.

for mp3s and important thinks i would use a reduntant type of raid, not raid 0

thats why i run my os on raid 0 and my important stuff on raid 1

 

[XS Janus]

Well If you would like to move your array from one mobo to the other you really should buy a hardware controller.
I would go Raid5 or Raid1 (if you have less data, or money is not an issue, because Raid1 doubles your data on other drives) if you keep music and other files you worked hard accumulating.

As for game installs working after a reformat just because you installed them on different partition, I wouldn't bet on that working as a sure thing.
You REALLY should try that before you commit to anything.