Raid 10

[apurv1595]

Hey there guys,

I am new here and just wanted to clear something.I know nothing about RAID except it's full form and what it does (increase speed or data protection).

Now i need HELP!.I have two WD Green Hard drives.One is 1TB and the other is 2TB (the 2TB one is WD20EARX and the other one is the older generation). The older one is now 2 years old and i am scared of losing the data if anytime in future the drive fails. So i heard about RAID and wanted to try it out and liked the idea of RAID 10 (It will increase my chances of not losing my data as well as give me if any speed increase).

I am not gonna buy an expensive RAID card.So i wanted to clear out few things-

1) Is Raid 10 a good option for saving my data?

2) Can I Raid with my mobo (ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3)

3) The hard disk are not boot drives.The boot drive is a 120gb Corsair Force 3 SSD. The hard drives contain Music,Videos,Movies and stuff. RAID 10 OK for it?

4) Will add more drives to the RAID in the future.Most probably WD Green's again.That's fine?

I just want a way to increase my chances to save my data. Any suggestions are welcomed and dont hesitate to teach me as i am a NOOB when it comes to RAID.

Thank you for your replies.

Config-

ASUS MAXIMUS IV GENE-Z/GEN3 Mobo

Intel Core I7-2600K

8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz

Zotac GTX 460SE 1GB

Just ask if any more details are required!

[Ssoele]

1) RAID 10 needs 4 drives to work, so no, you should look into RAID 1 (mirror), but you will only have 1TB storage on those 2 drives combined (you will lose 1TB on the 2TB model).

2) Yes, your motherboard is RAID capable.

3) Unless you really need high speeds (for video editing I assume), you don't really need more that the normal read/write speeds of a drive.

4) Adding more drives might be a bit tricky on the on-board controller.

TL;DR: Use RAID 1, but you will only have 1TB of storage, but it's secure. If you want more, buy a second 2TB drive and RAID 1 that one with your current 2TB drive and you will have 2TB of storage and a spare 1TB drive.

[apurv1595]

Hey Ssoele, thanks for the quick reply.Your answer helped me a lot.

Just two more things-

1)Can i run 2 simultaneous RAID? RAID 0 2 of the corsair ssd's (buy another one) for killer windows booting and loading times + RAID 1 the hard drives?

2)How can i get more SATA ports? All my ports are full or will be full. 2 for ssd ,2 for hard drive,1 for optical drive and 1 for front e-sata port.If you suggest some expansion card do give some good products that are gentle on my pocket (still a student) and it should be something that works on pci-e 16x as 1 pci-e 16x is being used for graphics card. the small pci is for adding a sound card in the future.That leaves the secong pci-e 16x. Don't prefer SLI and i think i still won't in the future due to the issues it causes (at least that's what i heard).

Again very thanks for your quick reply. You have my Respect!

[Ssoele]

1) You can run multiple RAIDs at the same time.

2) I suggest getting a cheap sata card on eBay or something (eg. http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-PCI-Ex...item1e768ce14e). They're not the fastest cards, but they do the job and are cheap (use those of your DVD drive or something).

[Whaler_99]

You can typically run multiple raid sets and configs, so a RAID 0 Boot array, RAID 1 storage array, etc. Only issue, if your BIOS is not currently set for RAID and is set for, most likely, AHCI, switching it to RAID can cause it not to boot. Don't worry, switch it back and it will boot. You may need to pre-load the drivers into Windows so it recognizes the RAID controller.

Adding RAID card - unfortunately, you cannot cheap out here. :) Once you have used up the RAID capable ports on your mobo, you need to buy a RAID capable card, which typically is not cheap. One option, just buy a basic 2 or 4 port sata card. Move your CD-ROM and e-sata ports to that. Frees up mobo ports.

You have 6 RAID capable ports. Looks like you also have two red sata ports - are you using those?

FYI - going raid0 on the SSD boot won't have much effect. That is really only or extreme bench marking. A single SSD can pretty much saturate a SATA3 port. Also, you increase your chance of failure. If a single drive fails, you lose the whole array...

[apurv1595]

Hey Ssoele and Whaler_99, thanks for the replies

Ssoele thanks for the link i will look into those things.

Whaler_99 what are red sata ports? If you mean SATA 3 ports then yes 1 for ssd and 1 for the 2TB HDD. And the reason i was going for the ssd raid was to mainly increase my storage to 240gb and as it is raid 0 it might give me some non-noticeable speed increase.

Thank you guys for the replies and I think this forum will be a great place for me to learn new stuff.