Hard Drive Setup?

[Exile_Chavez]

Well people of the tech forums, I have come with yet another decision. I have realized that I have over 150GB of data on my hard drive with no protection at all. So I decided that I might setup a 'raid' system. Here is what I would do.

I would purchase about a 60GB SSD, and install the windows system on that.
Saying it is possible I would have 2 640GB 7200RPM HDDs, running in raid 1 for the mirroring.

Now my main question is, is this a possible setup, and potentially, crazy freakin thought, run raid 10 instead for the mirror and the speed along with it, but probably not.

I am currently running the system that is under my profile, but to save everyone time, I know for sure that my motherboard, and my HDD and the one i would duplicate handle both raid 1 and raid 10.

So will this work?

 

[newtekie1]

To do RAID 10 you need 4 drives.

Really RAID 1 is fast enough for data storage.

 

[Exile_Chavez]

So it would be possible what I was suggesting? The SSD Windows Partition, with the 2 640GB HDDs running raid 1 without windows on them as pure data drives?

 

[Batou1986]

So it would be possible what I was suggesting? The SSD Windows Partition, with the 2 640GB HDDs running raid 1 without windows on them as pure data drives?

Yes precisely

tho i don't know if it will work properly with the WD blue series drive you currently have.

 

[Exile_Chavez]

From some research, I could not find any hard evidence that the WD Blue Series even runs Raid at all,(Thank you freakin newegg for changing your site on me >_<). But there is a person I found that is running 2 of these drives in a D-Link NAS enclosure in a RAID1, so hopes are there. But since newegg removed the Raid support part of the specs on HDDs, there is no proof.

Now for the SSD i am slightly worried, I have been looking at:

OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II M...
and
OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA I...

Honestly the only difference between the 2 of them other than the price is that the top one, also the most expensive, has about 65 more MBs of read and write speed than the bottom one, which I guess makes a difference over a 60 second period of about 3.6 gbs of info, but worth the 35 dollars? not sure.

 

[slyfox2151]

any and every new sata HDD can be run in a raid..... i currently have 2 WD Blues and 2 WD Green drives in Raid 0.


worked flawlessly for the last 12 months or so.

get this drive
OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II M...



it uses the sandforce controller, its one of the fastest.

 

[Exile_Chavez]

it is a tad more expesnisve, but when it comes to computers you get what you paid for , at least i hope.

but now here is the fun part, i need help learning how to set this up. right now i have a single 640gb WD blue, and i want to install the win7 onto the SSD, and use the raid as pure data drives. how can i uninstall or transfer the windows partition from the 640 to the ssd?
would i be able to transfer my files on the 640 i have now to the pure data 640 im getting, refomat the 640 i have now after i back it up with the pure data and install the windows onto the ssd, and the raid 1 should copy all the files from the pure data to the reformatted drive.

i hope this makes sense, im typing this on my phone with opera mini for the full html so i can do this. if it doesnt make sense tell me and ill redo it when i get on my laptop

 

[slyfox2151]

its a tad more expencive for 4 times the write speed..... 275MBps vs 70MBps ^^

 

[Exile_Chavez]

WoW. O.O did not see that there. Yeah 30 bucks is worth a sustained write of a quarter gig a second.

->Slyfox

Since you have a raid setup, was it difficult to set-up? I am slightly worried of the difficulty of setup, and managing to get everything where is should be, since I have no large outside storage device to copy onto.

->General

I am not sure if this is possible, but here is what I see at least as the easiest possible way to do what I need to do.

Ok, first some names for things:

WinSSD: This will be the 60GB SSD with the windows partition on it
WD1: My original HDD, this contains all my information, and an existing windows partition
WD2: The new HDD for raid 1, this is an empty drive with no information on it.

My plan for implementing this goes like this

1)Reformat the WinSSD and WD2 to make sure they are completely clean
2)Copy files and files only from WD1 to WD2
3)Install a windows partition onto WinSSD
4)Boot and setup WinSSD and get it running
5)After WinSSD is running, reformat WD1
6)Setup Raid 1 between WD1 and WD2, which in turn should copy all the files on WD2 onto WD1 and start the Raid 1 features right off from 2nd boot of WinSSD
7)Go from there like normal

Now the above from what I understand should work fine, but I would like some other opinions to make sure, since I am new to Raid.

 

[slyfox2151]

Setting up the raid is VERY EASY once u understand what is what....


the only things im worried about with your setup is the fact that there will be data on the drive your trying to setup into a raid... i donot think that will work.. it will most likely wipe all the data from both drives when you try to set it up.


try it anyway... it should tell you if it will delete the data first or not.



just make sure when you intall windows make sure the bios is set to Raid mode or AHCI, not IDE.

 

[Exile_Chavez]

Hmmm......so now Im going to need a spot to store about 175gbs of info. My friend might have a 250gb travel drive, will that work? Copy all my files to that and then format and repeat the above?

 

[slyfox2151]

yes, that will work fine.

 

[Exile_Chavez]

Thanks for the help everyone. I will update this thread when I get to the setup and everything

 

[Exile_Chavez]

Hey guys, quick question, and need a response ASAP. Is a 40GB SSD big enough to hold windows7 64bit home premium for the near future? I was planning a 60GB, but Newegg has the 40GB for 100 bucks, compared to the 135 for the 60GB, and if it is big enough I might go for it.

 

[slyfox2151]

yes, 40GB should be MORE then enough... i currently have my windows installed on my Raid 0 in a 30GB partition.... it still has 12GB free with everthing installed.

 

[TIGR]

The Windows (7 Ultimate x64) folder on the computer I'm currently using consumes 14GB of disk space. However, the total disk usage between my Windows installation and other software is 200GB (no personal files, documents, or multimedia included in that number). That's easily above average, but the point is it will vary from user to user. Take a look at how much disk space you're using for Windows and program files right now.

I wouldn't install Windows 7 on a 40GB SSD. As an SSD approaches being full, write speeds can suffer, slowing down performance. I imagine that most people who are into computers enough to frequent TPU, are the types of users who would have no trouble filling that SSD with Windows + other software.

 

[slyfox2151]

afaik hes using the SSD just for windows as i understand.. and his raid array for everthing else...

 

[Exile_Chavez]

slyfox is right, ill have just windows, and windows updates on the SSD. ill have my raid array for every thing else, programs and stuff. mainly because i am in a situation much like you with a very very large program files folder and the SSD to hold that would be priced out the blowhole.

so i might end up getting the 40, but in theory, the 40 at full price is 125, a small 10 dollars short of the 60, but now it is 35 dollar difference, so that might change me.