Question on using RAID

[Megashrap]

I just bought myself 2 raptor 150 gig HDD's. The mainboard came with a Raid floppy disc, am I correct in saying that I need to use that disc now for the 2 drives for more than one SATA HDD? Thanks in advance for any help.

[gryphon]

you only need that disk when you want to setup a RAID array with those 2 disks.

Only choices for that are RAID 0 or 1. Which will result in fast data access with the two drives striped, although if one of the 2 drives fails you will loose all your data. Or a mirrored array which results in just 150gig of storage space although that is backuped on a second disk all the time.

If you want to use both drives and use the total amount of 300 gig you don't need the floppy and have no need to setup the RAID array. :)

[Megashrap]

Ah, ok makes sense now. Thanks alot man. I basically want to use 1 for XP home OS and the other as

storage for movies,programs and a partition for a clean install for my OS backed up on it. Also I will probably use the second raptor for Vista whenever I get the cash for it.

Man these raptors are awesome HDD's. And I really love the SATA connectors,no more bulky belt cables to get in the way of other stuff.

[Andrew]

I found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

informative for me since I knew nothing about them a while ago. Mostly for the quick chart to show the difference between the RAIDs.

[Megashrap]

Yea, I read on that link also about it. Man what a huge difference in the SATA and the old belt cables it makes....HUGE speed difference,no comparison at all in the 2.  ;D Now thats what I call true plug n play HDD's. No jumper configs or anything.

[gryphon]

Things SCSI disks have had for ages ;)