Buying a new HDD

[Skooma]

In my pc i currently have 2x250gb SATAs in RAID 0. I want to buy a new HDD to install XP on (currently have Vista on the 250gb drives) but i have a couple of questions.

1. Will buying a new HDD affect my RAID 0 setup? I'm pretty sure that it won't but I just want to make sure.

2. Here is the hard drive i was looking at buying - Komplett.ie - Samsung SpinPoint T166 320GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM Now, it says this drive is SATA2 (as you may have guessed I've had no experience with SATAs before) and i have no idea if it will work. Is it something that your motherboard needs to support? (it's a dell 9200, pretty new like, but the motherboard is probably ****)

3. The ports on my motherboard. I've opened it up and inside my 250gb drives are connected with blue cables to two ports side by side on the motherboard. There are 4 other ports together near them, one of which has an orange cable (like the blue ones but orange) going to my disc drive. Now I've checked the BIOS and it says i have 6 SATA ports, i assume they're the ones i just described, and that when i get the new drive i will just plug it in beside the orange one into one of the ports, but i would like someone to confirm.

I'm actually not a complete idiot when it comes to computers (as the above post would suggest ), but anyway, any help here would be appreciated, thanks.

Also, is it common for new hard drives to include SATA cables? Because if not I'll have to order some with it.

[saltynay]

1 no it won't

2. you will need to buy a sata cable aswell the hdd won't come with one as you normally get 6 or so when you buy a motherboard

3. yes just plug it in a sata port like on this mobo

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[Skooma]

Great thanks. Do you know anything about SATA2 (i think you got mixed up between the end of my post and my question 2)

Another question, is it possible to add another disk the RAID? i know it would probably involve reformatting, but it is something i would consider when i get rid of XP. Do the drives all have to be the same size, with the same cache though?

[b1gapl]

SATA II, will fit in that motherboard, don't worry. SATA II is also backwards compatible with SATA I.

Yes...it's possible to add another hard drive to a RAID array. But I'm not sure about three hard drives for RAID 0, will work. I think it's recommended that you use the same size and cache hard drives, for a RAID setup, to avoid conflicts. But you could use hard drives of different sizes, for a JBOD(Just a Bunch Of Disks).

[Skooma]

Thanks!

Could you give me a quick run through of what you do in order to set up RAID? (or JBOD, i'll have to google this and have a read) I'm not asking for a huge tutorial (or a link to one) if you could just give the rough steps involved, so i will have an idea if i would like to go that route or not. One thing i'm concerned about is drivers, a big question is are they motherboard specific? because if they are there's probably no hope of me getting them for this dell, and i doubt they're included on the CD.

[Zachalmighty]

Since Im in this topic, Id lock to ask what RAID 0 is? Is it some sort of master-slave drive configuration?

[b1gapl]

Originally Posted by Skooma

Thanks!

Could you give me a quick run through of what you do in order to set up RAID? (or JBOD, i'll have to google this and have a read) I'm not asking for a huge tutorial (or a link to one) if you could just give the rough steps involved, so i will have an idea if i would like to go that route or not. One thing i'm concerned about is drivers, a big question is are they motherboard specific? because if they are there's probably no hope of me getting them for this dell, and i doubt they're included on the CD.

JBOD means Just a Bunch Of Disk. It's for people who have different sized hard drives, and just want them all combined into one big hard drive.

The rough steps to setup RAID is:
The basic steps are, making a RAID driver floppy disk. Then install the hard drives, go into BIOS, and setup the RAID array you want. In that case RAID 0. Then restart the computer, insert the Windows cd, and at the blue screen, when it says to press F6 to install RAID drivers, you press F6, and insert the RAID floppy disk. Follow instructions, and install Windows as normal.

Originally Posted by Zachalmighty

Since Im in this topic, Id lock to ask what RAID 0 is? Is it some sort of master-slave drive configuration?

Zachalmighty,
RAID 0 is known as stripping. It's having two disk seen as one hard drive. This will boost performance, because information is being written and read, from two hard drives at the same time, rather than one.

[Skooma]

Great thanks. Floppy disk may be a problem though, i don't have a drive (ive heard there are ways around that though?) Are the drivers specific to the motherboard? Or do you just download any old RAID drivers?

[b1gapl]

The RAID drivers, I believe are specific to the motherboard, as the RAID drivers are included on the CD, that comes with the motherboard.

[Skooma]

Oh i see. Guess i can probably forget about that then. Thanks for the help anyway!