ATM I have a single 150GB WD Velociraptor, with my OS, programs, and games. Well...it's getting almost full and I don't want to go buy some SSD for $300 and reinstall everything, so I decided to get a second 150GB WD Velociraptor and put it in raid 0 for even faster performance. However; I was wondering two main things: -Can I put a second HDD in raid 0 without uninstalling the files already insstalled in the first HDD? -How do I actually setup a RAID 0? can it be done with an already used HDD such as my first Velociraptor?
You could save your files by cloning your current HDD to a file and then restoring it on the RAID setup after setting it up. But TBH, RAID is just more hassle than it's worth IMO.
Yep. Same opinion here. In any case, you would have to reinstall everything, because RAID setup wipes your HDD. I had RAID 0 for a while, with just 2 normal drives, and I really didn't notice the difference, which was because I used the Mainboard Chipset. without a dedicated Raid card (these are expensive as hell) you won't notice a real difference, as the Velociraptors are already damn fast on their own. Also, if one of the drives has a tiny error your whole array is totally... Well, you don't even have to think about restoring any Data after a RAID collapse ^^"
If I was to copy and paste EVERYTHING, from my C Drive, and run them on another drive that will replace my single 150GB HDD C Drive, wouldn't there be problems with registry codes and "hidden files"?
Copypasting won't work. That won't copy the boot sector or MBR or such. Also if you do it on a live system, it won't copy the most important system files (eg. the registry hives in system32\config). The only answer is cloning. But there's another problem aswell. When you boot the first time with the array after cloning, you'll get a 0x7B BSOD stating INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE due to missing drivers.
You can't "upgrade" to a RAID0. As part of building it in the array manager, all data is wiped. Depending on the hardware in question its sometimes possible to build a RAID1 (redundant mirror) by copying the existing drive over, but I've tried it before, and hosed a domain controller. The only domain controller. Lesson learned: make a backup. If you used something like Ghost to make a full backup of your C: drive to a USB hard drive or another disk, and then built the array, and restored via the Ghost CD, that would do it. There's also free tools out there which will functionally do the same job, like CloneZilla!
Like Zoon said above, Drivers would be the Problem. When I installed my first RAID 0 on Windows XP it took me a whole day, sitting at the PC all the time, to figure that it wouldn't accept drivers inserted when it asks for them, but rather replace them with native windows drivers when installing because they were no signed. None I found were signed, by the way. I ended up nLiting the Drivers into a fresh XP installation CD - Meaning I edited them into the installation ISO. It worked, but I didn't really noticed the difference expcept for when 1 of my dirves died on me and all data was lost. The whole procedure was pretty much a pain... you know where.
I understand. Looks like setting up a RAID 0 will be rather complicated. So I will just clone all my files with some good clonening program (any suggestions?) and buy an SSD. What are some SSDs with -No Microstuttering -Above 200GB -$150-$300
Hmm no I'm not saying drivers would be a problem, I'm saying that when you build a RAID0 array it wipes your hard drives. Because a stripe puts half the data on each drive, it has to write it going forward, and can't retro-actively disperse the data across two drives. Drivers, WOULD be a problem if you were installing your OS and nLite is a very good answer to that, but Ghost and CloneZilla should pick em up, and Ghost has a nLite stile utility for inserting drivers if not anyway Can't help you on the SSD in $$ (as I'm in the UK) but a little googling will give you tons of reviews. There's lots of different hard drive controllers out since the last month or two, with prices dropping, and performance/longevity increasing. If you can put it off a couple months you'll probably get a really good 256gb SSD under your price limit, but for now ... I think that budget would be pushing it slightly!!
You should have a look at the OCZ Vertex Series. They've been getting good reviews everywhere, and people tell me they are fast as lightning. Also, they are not too expensive for SSDs, they are what I would be getting if I had some extra money at the moment. If you wait though, Price will drop of course.
