Im planning on re-formating my drives to set up a raid array. But, I've never done raids before, so I have a quick performance and setup question about raid 0. (Iv'e done research on different types of raids, and I've decided to do 0) I have 3 drives, but only planning to raid 2. The Raided drives will be used for OS and the 3rd for storage. The ones Im planning to Raid: WD 320GB SEw/: 8mb Cache and SATA1.5 gb/s WD 250GB SE16w/: 13mb Cache and SATA3.0 gb/s Questions: 1) Can I even raid 0 these drives? As you can tell they are quite different. 2) If I can, the performance will be bottlenecked by the 320GB SE due to the smaller cache and older Sata, right? 3) The size however will be limited to 500GB due to the 250GB drive. Can I use the extra space left over on the 320 GB harddrive? 4) If I can do a Raid0, will it perform better than my WD500 SE-16 16mb Cache Sata3.0GB/s? If the 2 older drives in a Raid doesn't perform better than the 500GB SE-16, then I will just install the OS on the 500GB SE-16 and use the other 2 separate (non-raid) for storage.
1. yes 2. somewhat, yes 3. no 4. probably not. if you're using onboard raid controller, very probably not. imho it's not worth the hassle and risk if you've got a 500GB drive you can use.
ok, thanks. Ill go with the 500 as my OS drive and the others for storage. Saves me a lot of trouble. Thanks!