Hardware RAID vs Software RAD

[firest0rm]

is there a big speed difference for standard HDD's in raid 0?

i got a Asus sabretooth P67 and i want to get a second Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD

now the raid controller is Marvell i dont know if its bad or good

now im thinking would it differ much if i get hardware raid or software raid using the raid on the mobo...

is it worth buying a raid card over a simple HDD raid 0?

[Swatboss]

#1 - HDD's are limited by the speed at which they can spin and read... RAID0 means data spread across 2 drives, so in a sense you are doubling your read and spin speeds. 7200RPM would now be a theoretical 14400 spin speed because half of the data is on each drive. This is great for a boot drive, and to house your games. Make sure you are storing any crucial data on a 3rd storage drive (RAID5), or back it up on an external since if one of these drives goes bad, you lose ALL data on BOTH drives.

#2 - a MoBo RAID controller should work just fine for basic RAID configurations. Hardware RAID solutions are great for advanced RAID arrays, or to take pressure of the MoBo/CPU such as in a mutli SSD configuration.

#3 - The best and easiest way to upgrade speeds (My Opinion) Is to simply purchase an SSD for your Boot Drive (My 128GB Samsung 830 holds Windows 7, WoW, LoL, SWTOR, and still has a little extra room) and use your HDD as a Storage drive. Another option would be to purchase a small 32/64GB SSD (if your system is Intel SRT Compatable) or an SSD Cache kit such as sold by OCZ and Crucial. That way you still have your HDD storage, but you have a portion of SSD Speed because the SSD is used as your storage buffer.

[firest0rm]

i already own 2 SSD's i need storage space because of torrents that i download end up being aound 60GB big

its just a quick solution until i get a real 5TB nas going, anything valuable ill backup to the nas.

i was just wondering because im getting a second Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB ill be putting both of them in raid thru the Motherboard