Raid 1 Setup

deckie27

I'm on a money saver in work
I'm going to setup a pc with 2 120gb HDDs. for storing images of PC's and instalation disks etc
I am going to use a regular PC 1ghz processor 256mb ram (Dell) take out the CD drive and put the second Hdd on that ide line, and use win2k advanced server

I have never setup a PC like this before, Do you think this will work properly or do any of ye have advice on this?
Do I need a seperate raid controller or will the software raid in 2k do ?

Thanks in advance
Dec

stereo_steve

IT'll work perfect! Go for it. But I would recommend that you use hardware instead of software. You obviously are looking to increase the speed that you work at so why not buy the card? You could pick up a very cheap second hand one or even a new one on komplett. Although their cheapest iss about €80.

It sounds like your gong to be storing alot of important infrmation there that is important for work. ARe not worried at all about a disk failure?

po0k

I've heard someplaces that certain makes of RAID card are little better then software raid, in terms of CPU usage.

Unfortunately i can;t add any more then that at this time.

deckie27

Sorry stereo_s.
I forgot to mention I'm going to set them up as raid 1 (mirroring)
From feed back getting the software raid that is built into win 2k (works) but is ****. Is this right

_CreeD_

Software Raid will tie up your CPU, consumer level Raid cards (Eg. Promise/Highpoint) aren't quite so bad. The higher level cards have their own processors and take the vast majority of the load from the system. As for the speed they actually perform their operations at afaik the consumer level cards can keep up with most entry level pro cards, its just a matter of resource usage doing it. There was a pretty good roundup on www.anandtech.com last year, so it might be worth heading over there and doing a search.

stereo_steve

Sorry! I just zoomed through your post there. I'll read slower in future!