RAID question

[dogbyte_13]

I have 2 new 160GB Western digital blues sitting around, and since HDD prices are insane and i cant really afford to get newer drives, would it be a good thing to run these in raid 0? or wha other raid type could i use that mobos support to get them to be as one drive without a performance hit?

 

[Old Hippie]

New drives are cheap .

That's strange.

Why is there so much bitching about high HD prices?

 

[dogbyte_13]

new drives arent cheap, plus wont have the cash for BF, a 500gig is 89-99$ thats not cheap

 

[Old Hippie]

Depends on budget. I bought 2 x 2 TB WD blacks new for 80 each. I was more than happy

Show me.

Cheapest price I'm seeing is @ 140.00.

Mechanical HD prices have skyrocketed since the disasters have hit the manfg area.

 

[David_CAN]

Depends on budget. I bought 2 x 2 TB WD blacks new for 80 each. I was more than happy

You haven't been paying much attention. Flooding in Thailand, which brought production of several key part suppliers to a standstill, has driven the price of mechanical 3.5 drives through the roof. For comparison some drive price for models I bought just before the distaster and what they are today.

2TB Seagate Barracuda XT, $150 then, $350 now
2TB Hitachi 5K3000, $80 then, $210 now

As for the original question, RAID 0 is really the only hardware level spanning you'll get off most any motherboard with 2 harddrives. You could span them in Windows too with dynamic disks, that would slightly lower the risk (one drive failing wouldn't necessarily destroy everything) but would have a tiny performance hit over a single drive (and RAID 0 would be faster then just one drive alone). Though at the end of the day, even in RAID 0, I doubt that those low density 160GB drives are going to be setting any records for performance - the above mentioned Hitachi drives thanks to their density have fantastic transfer rates - the speed up is very noticable compared to a 1TB 7200rpm Samsung in the same system.

 

[Old Hippie]

that flood messed up a lot things, feel bad for the people and all too

We'll forgive you for putting your foot in your mouth on your first day here.

But only one time.....After that a hit squad comes to finalize the matter.

JK.

Welcome to the forums.

Edit....I forgot the origional question. OP, take David_CAN's advice to heart and forget about RAIDing those things. It's not worth the trouble.

 

[dogbyte_13]

ok thanks, just scored a 250GB Sata 6Gbs Blue from a friend so im good now.

 

[Old Hippie]

ok thanks, just scored a 250GB Sata 6Gbs Blue from a friend so im good now.

Nice!

I hope you do realize that a SATA6 interface is just for shits and giggles.

Those drives barley hit SATA1 specs and SATA6 is just marketing bullshit.

 

[Old Hippie]

I'm glad I got mine when I did apparently

AFAIK the "Hit Squad" still just "shoots" beer.