RAID Questions

[TwistedMetalGear]

Hey, I had two 150GB Raptors in RAID 0 on my previous set up, until one of the drives had a mechanical failure and completely screwed me over. So I learned my lesson. No RAID 0, ever again!

So I RMA'ed the drive, and received the replacement today. My questions are as follows:

1) How should I set them up? Obviously I don't want RAID 0 anymore. So what do I do? Which option will give the best performance and safety?

2) Referring back to step one, is there a step by step guide somewhere on how to set it up like that?

3) Since I have one brand new drive and one used drive, the used drive still has data on it, while the new one is completely empty (and unpartitioned?). Should I reformat the used drive first, or can I just plug them in together and reformat/partition both drives at the same time?

As a computer science major I should know this stuff like the back of my hand, but I have only installed one RAID setup in my life, and I only deal with hard drive installs once every 2-3 years. So any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Drudenhaus]

1. RAID 1 (mirror) if you want redundancy. Otherwise, just use them as separate drives.
2. How you setup up a mirror is dependant on the controller BIOS you are using. Typically the RAID card manual or motherboard manual have step by step instructions.
3. If the 'used drive with data on it' which you are referring to is half of the old RAID 0, then just format it as it's useless without the other drive. The only things you could pull off it would be files smaller than the blocksize of the array you used.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Use them as separate drives, and if you are worried about data, use SyncToy to copy important data, like e-mails, game saves, etc to the second drive.

I'd also consider selling one of the Raptors, and buying a much larger drive for a storage drive.

 

[TwistedMetalGear]

1. RAID 1 (mirror) if you want redundancy. Otherwise, just use them as separate drives.
2. How you setup up a mirror is dependant on the controller BIOS you are using. Typically the RAID card manual or motherboard manual have step by step instructions.
3. If the 'used drive with data on it' which you are referring to is half of the old RAID 0, then just format it as it's useless without the other drive. The only things you could pull off it would be files smaller than the blocksize of the array you used.

I know I have to format it, but I was asking if I have to format it separately from the new drive, or can I just plug them both in as is and format/partition them together?

But you got me curious now, you say it's possible to pull some data off of it, even though it was a RAID 0 setup? Please explain as I would love to extract some chat logs if possible, but somehow I doubt it will be.

Thanks for the help!