Sata Vs ATA raid

[Mark]

Hi

I presently have 1*120gig 7200rpm drive in my machine but have run out of
room so will be adding another drive soon.

My question is which will be the faster option

Adding another standard 120g 7200rpm drive and running the pair in raid 0 or
to just buy a SATA 120g drive.

Motherboard is a Asus a7n8x deluxe btw

 

[Rob]

Going RAID 0 will give you the faster speed but you need an add-on card
as the A7N8X-Dlx won't do it with the PATA(IDE) controller, only on the
SATA controller.

 

[Mark]

Yeah i have a raid card spare. i thought XP could do it in software though ?

 

[Ron]

Hmm. Recommend you buy a SATA drive, and connect it to the SATA controller
[as a standalone drive]. Forget the RAID for now.

I say this because:

(1) you need *two* identical SATA drives for the onboard RAID...
(2) in order to initiate a striped array you firsat must totally wipe both
[RAIDed] drives and install the OS from scratch...
(3) Buying a SATA drive now will at least put you partway toward creating a
nice fast [RAID0] array some time down the road. (Because then you will
only need to buy ONE additional 120G SATA drive!)
(3a) Since you're going to buy a new drive *anyway*, and since the serial
interface is the "next wave'...you might as well pick up a SATA drive
now...'cuz you can!

Please post a follow-up.
Ron

 

[DaveW]

The faster solution is to get another 120GB and Raid 0 them.

 

[Chip]

See comments below:

Hmm. Recommend you buy a SATA drive, and connect it to the SATA controller
[as a standalone drive]. Forget the RAID for now.

I say this because:

(1) you need *two* identical SATA drives for the onboard RAID...

Actually they don't need to be identical. Of course ideally they are, but
it will work with any 2 drives.

(2) in order to initiate a striped array you firsat must totally wipe both
[RAIDed] drives and install the OS from scratch...

Yes, you need to wipe the drives, but you can then just restore your backup
onto the new raid0 array and away you go. There's no need to reinstall the
OS and all your apps. The only thing you do need to do is, install the raid
driver *before* you do your backup. Then when you restore, the raid driver
is in place and Windows can read itself from its new home on the raid array.

(3) Buying a SATA drive now will at least put you partway toward creating a
nice fast [RAID0] array some time down the road. (Because then you will
only need to buy ONE additional 120G SATA drive!)

True, but he can use a cheap pata>sata adaptor and have a raid array
straight away using his existing drive and 1 new sata drive.

(3a) Since you're going to buy a new drive *anyway*, and since the serial
interface is the "next wave'...you might as well pick up a SATA drive
now...'cuz you can!

I agree. Buying a pata drive is going to be a much more limited investment.

Please post a follow-up.
Ron

Cheers,

Chip.