quick question about RAID

[Åndhrimnir]

sorry for the stupid question, but I had trouble finding an answer to this:

I've ordered a couple new WD drives (640GB) and I'm going to set up an array of three of these drives in RAID 5. I've read that onboard RAID controllers are generally poor quality compared to dedicated RAID cards. I figured I would set up the array using my mobo's onboard RAID controller and see how it goes - if I notice a significant performance drop then I'll consider buying a RAID card. Anyway, my question is this: If I decide I want a discrete RAID card, will I simply be able to plug the drives into this card and go, or will I need to configure a new array (i.e. should I go ahead and put my data on the array once I set it up, or not bother until I'm sure I want it that way).

thanks!

 

[fellows]

I'm pretty sure that the raid 'controller' creates the array. So no, I don't think you can hot swap from one RAID array/configuration to another new one. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but by removing the drives and switching solutions you are basically destroying your first Array.

In short, test your setup first then copy over your data.

 

[Åndhrimnir]

okay, thanks. That's what I figured. My guess is I won't be noticing too much performance loss from the onboard setup anyways - even with three or four applications and a game open, my cpu is usually about 40% idle, so I likely won't miss the bit that's doing RAID-related operations. Good to know though.