Help me out with my disk drives?

[Deleted]

I've been helping my sister in law fixing around her new house. SO she went and got me a Samsung 830 SSD... 64gb.

I'm currently running 2x 160gb barracudas and one 320gb barracuda.
160 boot/win
320 storage and page file
160 storage

I would like to add in the new SSD and raid the two 160 barracudas. like this:
64 SSD - boot/win
160 + 160 HDD - RAID 0 storage
320 HDD - storage

How would i do this? Re installing windows of course. But at post.. do i need to install some raid drivers... or how do i know if theyre already built in my motherboard? I understood that before selecting my windows installation drive i have to raid the two smaller HDD's together first.

motherboard is an MSI 760gm-e51 (AM3) with SATA2
760NB/710SB

[lokii]

Lots of different ways to go. The easiest place to start though would be to familiarize yourself with Windows "Disk Management". Other ways are more hardware than software oriented and you may simply want to avoid.


One thing to note: It is possible for games to slow down a bit on drives set up on raids because of the extra verification and what not that goes on behind the scenes. If you see any programs slowdowns, it might be preferential to try a reinstall on the drive not in the raid.

[Deleted]

Yeah ive used disk management alot. Basically just need to know the best way to setup the RAID before installing windows.

I wouldnt mind the game slowdown on the raid drives. Since i have a 64gb SSD for main stuff, 320gb for storage and games, and the other 320(160+160) for a slightly faster storage

[Wrestler10307]

I don't know about how to set them up, but honestly I don't see a real reason to raid 0 just for storage... Not worth the risk to me.

[Deleted]

Adobe programs.

[Cyanotical]

... Not worth the risk to me.

the risk is actually superficial, when purchased together, HDDs tend to all die about the same time, whether they are in an array or not, negating any added risks of raiding them

[Wrestler10307]

the risk is actually superficial, when purchased together, HDDs tend to all die about the same time, whether they are in an array or not, negating any added risks of raiding them

Yeah I'm talking about life of the drives in general, it doesn't seem worth the possibility of losing data. With two of the same storage capacity drives, I'd mirror in raid 1 if the amount of storage space isn't an issue.

[Cyanotical]

Yeah I'm talking about life of the drives in general, it doesn't seem worth the possibility of losing data. With two of the same storage capacity drives, I'd mirror in raid 1 if the amount of storage space isn't an issue.

raid1 isnt any better, for the most part, the first drive will die and you will know you have days or less to back up the data and replace all the drives in the array