Do I need Raid for 2 hdd?

[Nooyawkah]

I'm using win xp and have an Abit KR7A (NON RAID) mobo. I would like to add a Linux OS and was wondering if I could add another hdd without a raid mobo?

[mjc]

Short answer, yes!

You can have two IDE devices per channel...a master device and a slave.

[Nooyawkah]

Thanks, I appreciate it. What's RAID for? Could it be for running 2 OS at the same time with 2 monitors? Sorry, ignorant here.

[john5211]

Hello,

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Devices. There are actually several different ways that RAID is implemented; it is designed to improve performance and/or provide fault tolerance (that is, if a hard drive fails the data would be recoverable).

For a description of the raid levels and what they do, you might try here (This is a company that sells RAID systems).

Until recently, RAID has mostly been too expensive to consider using in desktop computer systems. Lately, however, the prices for EIDE RAID controllers have come down to the level that they are being included on some motherboards (on-board RAID).

If you end up with one of these boards and you don't want to implement RAID, you can usually just use the extra EIDE channels to control regular devices; essentially giving you four channels (eight devices) instead of the standard two.

John

[Paleo Pete]

RAID also stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Either term can be used...

Here is the RAID section of the PC Guide from the PC Guide Topic Index

In general RAID is oriented more toward commercial/corporate applications, where the loss of a hard drive on a server would be extremely costly. For home users, it's basically overkill in most cases.

For the corporate network, RAID is very useful protection against data loss. Depending on the RAID type used, in most cases the hard drive can simply be replaced, and the data on it is still mirrored on another disk. Much better than losing the company's entire database for two days while the system is rebuilt and a backup restored from tape or CD...the RAID system allows for minimal downtime, usually a hard drive can be replaced in a matter of two hours or possibly less, and with little or no loss of data.

The home user under normal circumstances doesn't really need that level of data security. A simple tape or CD backup is sufficient.

[Gallaeglagh]

A RAID level 0 will give the home user a good boost in performance. The downside being that your using 2 hard drives the possiblity doubles that a crash of one will bring your system down, I guess this diverges a bit from the original question but worth mentioning.

Be careful adding the Linux, Mandrake seems to be the easiest I've tried to install. A full backup of data is in order before doing this.

[saphalline]

Don't forget that for most implementations of RAID (ie SCSI $ IDE), the multiple hard drives used must be of the same capacity. If not, the lesser of all capacities will be used.

For instance, if you have a 30GB HDD and a 40GB HDD, and you set them up for RAID, you will only be able to use 30GB from each HDD. The extra 10GB left over on the 40GB drive will be wasted.

Many drives and models from various manufacturers differ in size even when they are "rated" for the same GB capacity. A 30GB Maxtor drive may have 30.5 billion bytes while a 30GB IBM drive has 30.3 billion bytes, which means that any RAID set-up will again only use 30.3 billion bytes from each drive, so the extra 200 million from the Maxtor will be wasted. This doesn't even consider the performance differences between the two.

That's why, when setting up RAID arrays, you should always get the exact same drives, right down to the model number.

Just fyi, because I didn't see anyone mention this specifically. Well, this could also be more info than you ever wanted, too!

[geek]

Let's not forget what Nooyawkah wanted to do in the first place. Add a Linux OS. In this case RAID would not be an option (Of course unless you partitioned). The better choice here is to slave another HDD.

(You should actually replace your OS all together with LINUX. But I'm biased...)

Regarding RAID- I'm running a stripped array now. Did you know that in some cases RAID can actually slow things down? Read a great article in Maximum PC about RAID. Very enlightening....

[Nooyawkah]

Geek, I think you're gettin' the idea. A 2nd Hdd seems like the way to go. Does it matter if it's the same size as the existing one?

[HewittC4]

Geek, I think you're gettin' the idea. A 2nd Hdd seems like the way to go. Does it matter if it's the same size as the existing one?

No, on the computer I am using right now, I have a 30GB drive as my master drive and a 40GB drive as the slave and I am able to use all 70GB. My mobo is RAID capable, but it is not necessary for what I use my system.