raid question
 

for as many pc's as i've built, i never built a raid, and I have a stupid question..

how difficult is it to partition a raid array? if want to raid 2 drives, but have say a 20 gig for OS and the rest as a data drive. or maybe at 0+1 with 4 drives, but still only 2 visible partitions. either way, is it possible? thanks in advance :)

anyone......anyone.....bueller......bueller....?? heheh

are you using a raid controller or a soft raid?

windows or linux?

What raid type do you want to run?
Raid0-5? Mirroring, striping, parity, or a combo?

In a hardware RAID solution, the controller passes whatever logical volume you tell it, and the OS sees that logical volume as a disk.

During the OS installation you may partition it as you see fit, just as you would a single disk.

Software-based RAID works much differently. Whereas hw raid is an array of disks...sw raid (regardless of which OS you're running) is an array of partitions on the disks.

Here's an example of software raid taken too far.

if you have a hardware riad setup you use a bios like screen to configure the raid setup to what ever you like.... then in whatever OS you partion it since it will be seen as ONE disk in the os... The OS will not really know what drives or configuration there is, it just sees it as a volume...

its easy to make a hardware raid, you have to use the config stuff that they have (its a boot option some where, i have to hold ctrl f2 i think) then it list the drives connected and you build your raid, to install an OS you have to hope that the OS can find the RAID, if it cant you have to instal drivers for it when it asks for them (press ___ now if you need to instal 3rd party RAID drivers or something like that.)

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dont use a software raid, they are horible, they dont do much.

i had a 3 drive raid 0 and i barely got 5% increase in speed, where as with my hardwear raid of 2 drives i have an increase of 70%