RAID or not?

[Gamehendge Jazz]

Having a system built for a number of daily uses: Audio/Video Editing, HTPC DVR, Gaming, etc. (Currently planned system listed below). Question is...

With one main drive (WD Raptor 74GB) & four storage drives (WD SATAII 250GB or WD SATA 320GB), would a RAID setup be suggested? If so, what type of setup?

I plan to separate my file types into separate locations (ts files on one, audio on the others - with audio (wav) files taking up an equal or more ammount of space). I'm not familiar with the effects of accessing the storage drives within a RAID from multiple areas at the same time.

Case: Lian Li PC-6070B (http://www.lian-li.com/Product/Chassis/M_C_S_PC-6070.htm)
Power Supply: Enermax Coolergiant EG485AX-VHB ATX 12V 480W (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=100681)
Motherboard: Asus P5WD2 Premium 955x Audio/GB-LAN/IEEE/PCI-E/SATAII/DDR2/1066-FSB/Dual-Core/ATX P4 775 (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=110517)
CPU: Intel P4 640 3.2GHz LGA775 2MB 800 FSB (HT) (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=120315)
Memory: [2GB] 4 x 512 Corsair TWIN2X1024-5400C4 ($185/pair)
Main HDD: Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=150239)
Storage HDD: 4 x 320 - Western Digital 320GB SATA 8MB Cache 7200RPM (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=150439) - or WD SATAII 250GB //Raid 0+1
Video Card: BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC 256MB GDDR3/PCI-E/TV-Out/Dual-DVI (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=190482)
OS: Windows MCE2005

[Paul Komski]

I'm not familiar with the effects of accessing the storage drives within a RAID from multiple areas at the same time.
As far as a user is concerned there is no difference in accessing a RAID volume as there is in accessing any "normal" single HDD. Any RAID's behaviour "to an onlooker" is as if it were a HDD.

What to do and what sort of RAID to consider depends on what the priorities are. Speed at the expense of stability and with little or no redundancy would call for RAID 0 Striping but pretty insecure regarding potential data loss/recovery.

If constant backup and minimising downtime in the event of HDD failure is concerned than consider RAID 1 Mirroring - but the redundancy and expense is as high as it can get being at least a 1 to 1 ratio.

There are other RAID scenarios that involve lesser degrees of redundancy but you need to have the appropriate hardware to cope with them; well you need a RAID controller of one sort or anothre regardless of the way you go.

You need to tell us your priorities (speed, security, backup, expense) in order to give more meaningful advice but as long as you backup your vital data in some other way then using RAID may just be an unnecessary complication.

[Gamehendge Jazz]

Thanks for the tips. My HDD uses will consist of: Audio/Video Editing, Audio/Video Storage & Playback, and PVR. Much of my material will be the results of months to years of accumulation.

[classicsoftware]

If you are worried about storing lots of data then I would get an IDE or SATA raid card and use removable hard drives so the drives can be out of the system from time to time.
I set up a system for a client with the following configuration.

Main hard drive OS, programs and swap file.

Second internal hard drive for data storage only

Two drives mounted to be removable from the system. After backup from the data hard drive, the removable hard drive is stored off site for security and the second removable hard drive is inserted.

Works like a charm, the drive can be put in any PC, not so with a raid. The data is stored in a non-compressed state so there is no worry about software failure casuing a problem during re-install. The customer always has 2 hard drives that contain his data and one hard drive that is one backup behind and stored off premises.

This is a pretty redundant system....