How do you set up RAID 0 on AW8D?

MannieFr3sh · Jul 18, 2007, 12:51 AM

Hello.

I'm currently running on an AW8D with 2 SATA HDD's. A seagate 80gig HDD where i ONLY have my OS installed (XP Pro) and a 320gig Seagate where i have everything else (programs, music, games, movies, etc). I just recently bought another 320gig Seagate identical to the one i have. They're both
ST3320620AS. I want to have them running in RAID 0 but i have no clue on even the first step on how to get this done. I already backed up everything to a 500gig Mybook so no worries about reformatting and such.

Now i have a couple of questions.

Would i be better of getting rid of (performance wise) the old 80Gig i have and installing the OS on an OS partition on the RAID 0 array. This way i would have just 2 HDD's in my pc and i can stick the old 80gig in my old pc or w/e. Or should i just keep using the 80Gig for the OS?

Second question is how do i go about creating a RAID 0 array with the 2 320gigs? My PC doesn't have a floppy drive so i can't use the floppy discs that came with the mobo. What drivers/software/anything else do i need? Oh and i plan on using the Intel Matrix Storage controller instead of the silicon image ones cuz i've heard that it's a lot faster and a lot more stable.

Thanks for the help and here are my system specs just in case:

P4 530 @ 4Ghz
2 Gigs G.Skill Ram
80Gig SATA Seagate (OS)
320Gig SATA Seagate (Stuff)

***temeteus82*** · Jul 18, 2007, 01:03 AM

For your first question: get rig of that old 80 Gb drive. OS on RAID-0 is faster.

For second question you enable the RAID mode in BIOS and then during the boot you goto RAID controllers BIOS, unless your mobo's BIOS can configure the RAID array. I think that you need to get floppy drive so that you can install the drivers when windows setup asks them otherwise the setup might not see the drives...

MannieFr3sh · Jul 24, 2007, 10:13 AM

Ok i think i'm almost done. Now i'm just really confused on what to put where. I have 2 partitions. One 120gig Partition that i installed the OS on and the rest is the 478gig partition that i'm not sure what to use for yet.

I'm not sure what partition i should put my games and apps on. I want the BEST performance possible so what partition should i put my games on and what partition should i put my apps on? I have all my data stored on the Data partition but with plenty of space left. I've read that one partition should be used for small file sizes (OS and apps i guess) and another should be used for large file sizes such as movies, music, videos, etc. but i dont want the OS to slow down cuz i have games on the same partition.

Oh and is there ANY way i can use my extra 80gig that i now have lying around to increase the performance of the OS or performance of anything for that matter?