GeorgGG

I would like to by more disks 2x160Gb !!!!But I have in my PC one CD-rom, one CD_RW, and 2 disks, so i have no free ide ports and no RAID !!!

I would like to buy IDE or if U (boys and girls) say that its better to buy RAID Controller, i would like to WHICH and WHY ???

And also what is better,IDE or RAID Controller???

THX

Taurus

a RAID controller can function as a normal IDE controller, just don't enable any RAID stripes on it. and i don't think they would cost that much more so it would be a worthwhile investment in case you want to experiment with RAID later down the road. but if you're never going to, then it'll be the same speed with either choice.

maybe someone will come help you with brands and models.

Goatman

go for the RAID card, for the minimal increase in cost you can get a whole lot of performance out of them.

Zedric

Providing you set up a RAID 0 array that is.

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GeorgGG

RAID 0 is mirroring???

No i dont need max performance just disk space with minimal losses in CPU.
I need 320Gb od disk + 140 Gb that i already got just to work with decoding ( one file from camera is 20Gb)

coathanger007

RAID 0 is striped. Anything other that this (e.g mirroring) will slow down performance.

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JJB6486

RAID0 = Striping. Makes two disks look like one large disk. In your case, two 160GB would look like one large 320GB drive. Performance also equals about double that of one drive.

You'd probably want that.

JJB

coathanger007

There are at least nine types of RAID plus a non-redundant array (RAID-0):

RAID-0. This technique has striping but no redundancy of data. It offers the best performance but is not fault-tolerance.

RAID-1. This type is also known as disk mirroring and consists of at least two drives that duplicate the storage of data. There is no striping. Read performance is improved since either disk can be read at the same time. Write performance is the same as for single disk storage. RAID-1 provides the best performance and the best fault-tolerance in a multi-user system.

RAID-2. This type uses striping across disks with some disks storing error checking and correcting (ECC) information. It has no advantage over RAID-3.

RAID-3. This type uses striping and dedicates one drive to storing parity (an error checking technique) information. The embedded error checking (ECC) information is used to detect errors and data loss. Data recovery is accomplished by calculating the exclusive OR (XOR) of the information recorded on the other drives. Since an Input or Output operation an address all drives at the same time, RAID-3 cannot overlap I/O. For this reason, RAID-3 is best for single-user systems with long record applications.

RAID-4. This type uses large stripes, which means you can read records from any single drive. This allows you to take advantage of overlapped I/O for read operations. Since all write operations have to update the parity drive, no I/O overlapping is possible. RAID-4 offers no advantage over RAID-5.

RAID-5. This type includes a rotating parity array, thus addressing the write limitation in RAID-4. Thus, all read and write operations can be overlapped. RAID-5 stores parity information but not redundant data (but parity information can be used to reconstruct data). RAID-5 requires at least three and usually five disks for the array. It's best for multi-user systems in which performance is not critical or which do few write operations.

RAID-6. This type is similar to RAID-5 but includes a second parity scheme that is distributed across different drives and thus offers extremely high fault- and drive-failure tolerance. There are few or no commercial examples currently.

RAID-7. This type includes a real-time embedded operating system as a controller, caching via a high-speed bus, and other characteristics of a stand-alone computer. One vendor offers this system.

RAID-10. This type offers an array of stripes in which each stripe is a RAID-1 array of drives. This offers higher performance than RAID-1 but at much higher cost.

RAID-53. This type offers an array of stripes in which each stripe is a RAID-3 array of disks. This offers higher performance than RAID-3 but at much higher cost.

http://www.ebabble.net/html/types.html

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Zedric

RAID 0 is often recommended for working with video. So that seems to be a good idea in your case.

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GeorgGG

thx

I`ll now have to decide wich Raid Controller to buy .

Do U have any idea wich is the best or i have to say wich would performances are the best. Im not putting a lot of money on that, so its importat to me that the RAID controller is optimal for me!!!

thx again

coathanger007

If you don't want to put any money on that then use software RAID with disk management in Windows XP Pro

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Admiral Michael

I like Promise's line of IDE Conrtollers, Im sure the RAID cards are the same, or even better.

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