How to setup SATA RAID 0 AND backup on IDE drive??

[jpevball]

I am looking for some guidance and direction from some computer gurus...I recently put together a whole new system but used my old crappy IDE hard drives (120gb with OS/Win XP and my main programs on it....and 200gb on the other for storage)...other than those two old school drives, I am running everything else new (core 2 duo E6750, MSI p6N platinum SLI mobo, GeForce 7600GT, 4GB DDR2 800mHz RAM, and 2 SATA DVD burner drives)... Soooo my question is:

If I bought 2 new SATA drives (2X250 pr 2X320), would it be possible to setup a RAID 0 array for the OS and programs, and keep the old 200 GB IDE drive purely for storage(i.e. pictures, data files, etc..)?? Or would I really have to have 4 full hard drives with two in RAID 0 and two in RAID1??

Is it possible to load XP onto the IDE drive, and also on the RAID 0 setup and simply store some important data from the RAID to the IDE drive? This may be a stupid question.. but I'm new to this. Thanks,

-J

 

[Tmagic650]

Understanding RAID

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-0.4x-HOWTO-2.html

You have a SATA RAID 0 array and you want to back up on a separate IDE. The purpose of RAID is to give you faster data access or to protect your data by creating back ups or mirroring data to other disks... on the fly... all the time. You would do better by getting a USB external hard drive and move data to it when you feel like it. The data will still remain in the SATA RAID 0 array, as long as all the drives in the RAID 0 array remain functional. Lose 1 drive and the data in the RAID 0 arrray is lost totally. Understand?

As you read above, if you want speed and no data protection go with RAID 0. If you want data protection choose Raid 5 as an example

 

[jpevball]

Thanks for the tip/link.... I understand how RAID 0 works, but if I leave an old IDE drive in and move/copy files to it from the RAID array just in case I lose the array due to whatever problem.. would I be 'Backing up' my data on the IDE? Would it work like that instead of an external? Thanks again for your help!

 

[Tmagic650]

So understanding how RAID works, do you still want to set up a RAID 0 array? Why not set up a RAID 5 array?

Install the IDE drive, but make sure your boot priority is set to the RAID drive(s)... RAID 0 is optimized by using 3 or more drives in the array. Using only 2 drives, RAID is a "waste of time and resources"...

Think about it, do most casual RAID 0 users understand RAID? I don't think so

 

[jpevball]

Yeah.. but I am looking for the performance of RAID 0 with the peace of mind of backing up important data (files, pics, etc..).. the resources that I have currently is 2 X 320 GB SATA drives, and 1 X 200 GB IDE drive.... As I understand RAID 5 requires striping data to 3 similar drives(both in size and interface)... RAID 0 + 1 seems more appealing to me for data backup (from a RAID 0 array), but can it be done with two SATAs in RAID 0 and two IDEs in RAID 1? Anyway, because I am a chicken with computer stuff and don't want to damage anything, I may just go with using my hard drives for normal purposes..