HDD splitting?

[joe159540]

Hi,
When I upgrade from my current boot drive (a 250Gb 7200rpm hdd) to a ssd. I would like to add that to my raid 0 array in my build but I dont want to loose alot of memory as the other HDD's are 80Gb. I was wondering if it was possible to make the one physical HDD into 2 virtual HDD's to add them each to my RAID 0. I understand that I wont gain any speed other than not splitting it.
Thanks
My PC specs are:
Mobo - G33MO3
CPU - E8500 dual core @3.16Ghz
RAM - 5GB of DDR2 RAM (2.7 usable)
GPU - EVGA GTX 650
HDD's - 2x 80Gb sata II HDD's (raid 0 110mb/s) and 1x 250gb 7200rpm HDD
PSU - cx430W
No optical drive
Running windows 7 32 bit

 

[DelJo63]

"splitting" is just repartioning and takes some skill.

However, splitting the same drive for a RAID-X intent is IMO crazy. You get no benefit regardless of the 0,1,10 raid choice.

 

[joe159540]

I wanted to split my HDD into 2 virtual drives as I know that if I use it as one ill loose all my storage space except for 80Gb because of my other HDD's.
Thanks

 

[DelJo63]

I've been down this road more than once. First, Raid is not the solution. Second, there are multiple causes for HD failures. Take my recent experience, the HD would begin an I/O event and not complete it - - just hang. That's a failure in the electronics. Partitioning the drive will create two or more partitions and that would only protect you from getting a partition corrupted, which is not that frequent.

Imo, you should invest in a good external drive and some replication software.

 

[joe159540]

The files on this RAID Are not important to me thats why im using raid and not getting a faster hdd/bigger ssd.I cant go into a external HDD because I have no avalible PCIe ports and no USB3.0 ports on my mobo for decent read and write.

 

[Techpumpkin_WD]

Gi joe 159540,
There won't be any point in adding this HDD represented as 2 logical HDDs to the array as it will probably slow the whole array speed this way. A RAID array would be as fast as it slowest drive, and you will have one physical HDD do twice the work. Hence you'll suffer some speed loss. And isn't the speed the main reason to use RAID 0?
Just as jobeard I would recommend that you use the drive as it is without adding it to the array.
Hope that helps.

 

[joe159540]

Gi joe 159540,
There won't be any point in adding this HDD represented as 2 logical HDDs to the array as it will probably slow the whole array speed this way. A RAID array would be as fast as it slowest drive, and you will have one physical HDD do twice the work. Hence you'll suffer some speed loss. And isn't the speed the main reason to use RAID 0?
Just as jobeard I would recommend that you use the drive as it is without adding it to the array.
Hope that helps.

I'm not splitting the HDD to gain extra speed from it im adding it to the RAID setup no matter if I can do this "spiliting" but I would want to have more storage from the drive because I cant use the full 250GB from it in a 8-Gb raid array. I'm using a windows setup array because my motherboard doesn't support RAID.