Its been a while since i bought hardware but i need a total upgrade for the HL episode 1.
how do i raid ? i was looking at these hard drives http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/104346/rb/19212681652 and this motherboad http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/66708 . will it work and how do i do it ?
(ok, get ready for people telling you not to raid and raid is evel - personally I love it)
its pretty easy to do
stick your new m/b in, connect the new drives into the raid sata connectors (might have some raid and non raid ones - theyll be marked as raid/non raid in the manual tho if they are)
when you turn the pc on, you should get something like "press escape/F3/etc.." to enter raid bios, so press it... you need to make a raid array here, the menues should be pretty self explanatory, therell only be like 4 options or something.
you need to re-install windows (to use these disks as the bood drive)
when your installing windows, you get a "Press F6 to add aditinal scsi or raid drivers"
you press F6 here ;)
then put in the flopy drive that came with your m/b
click next, and after that its just like running with 1 drive :)
p.s. i just noticed that m/b doesent have any IDE connectors ? is your current drive sata or ide ? its nice if you can connect your old drive in to save all your stuff, and to use as a backup drive for all your inportant stuff ;)
remember to make the damned floppy before you start. other than that its easy, and its fast. The 133 PATA drives i use for my main array whip the SATA drive for performance, hence why the SATA is just a storage drive.
Another raid setup here :)
Just do as knighy said and it should work without a problem.
Something else you might want to do before you start is make sure your mobo has the latest bios, had issues getting raid to work on mine untill i did that.
Good luck :)
i want performance over anything. its going to be a gaming rig. what do u surggest ? no need to abck anything up as this is pure gaming. i have another rig for my work and stuff like that.
For performance over anything:
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/55454
or
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/50948
nuff said
ok i think i will stick to wht i was goin to get in the first place. do i need a extra wire or anything ? thank for all the advice so far.
^^ for the raid ?
nope, the drives connect into the m/b just like normal
once you make the raid array in the bios thing, and spress F6 on windows install itll look in windows etc.. like theres just one drive there :)
Which RAID mode are you planning on using?
RAID0 = performance and 160GB (with those drives) but no redundancy
RAID1 = redundancy and slight performance gain on read access, but only 80GB
If you have a good backup routine or dont mind the risk factor go with RAID 0.
I would advise you to get Windows, etc installed then make a backup of the hard drive, in case the stripe fails. Other than that, it will be fast as expletive.
Personal preference would be raid 0 and get something like Acronis Trueimage to back up onto the old IDE drive.