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Raid What is it?

Due to the increase in the speed of both Intel and AMD processors, many of today's hardware have found the need to increase their performance to keep up with the demand of consumers. Hard Drives are no different. In 2002, Manufacturers began releasing drives with Serial-ATA with the ability to transfer Data at a rate of 150Mbps and a RPM of 10,000 to 15,000rpm. Before this increase we had drives capable of 100Mbps and 133Mbps with a RPM of 7,200rpm in mainstream Home and Gaming PCs. A rather new addition to the need for speed has been the addition of RAID

RAID or "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, can be explained like this; " If one hard drive is good, then two hard drives working together must be better, right? That?s the idea behind RAID, which lumps together multiple drives to increase performance, provide additional protection to your data, or both. ?Striping? boosts performance by reading and writing to multiple drives simultaneously (like writing with both your left and right hands simultaneously). ?Mirroring? is an insurance policy that writes every bit of data to a redundant drive. These methods can be combined in a number of ways, called ?levels.?

Most middle to high-end Motherboards are now available with a RAID Controllers built in, supporting both IDE and SATA Drives. Integrated is usually the best configuration, capable of the advertised speed of 150Mbps (*SATA only). While PCI RAID controllers are limited to the allocated transfer rate of 133Mbps that PCIs are capable of. Intel has even made their 865 and 875 Southbridge capable of handling both RAID 0 and 1 for Windows XP and 2000. Only problem we have found with the Intel Southbridge set up has been, when the Southbridge is under load it can lower disc performance. In addition, when over clocking, The array can become unstable

One Note! When deciding to move to a RAID configuration, make sure you have adequate power supply. Some RAID Arrays have been known to take more than the normal amount of power to function adequately.

oC Drive below has been striped across both Maxtor SATA drives and the same for the D and E drive. This configuration will allow your system to Read and Write simultaneously to both Hard Drives. There-by increasing the speed in which it completes its task. So when you are first loading Windows, it will only see one drive. Lets say these Hard Drives are both 80GB each. In windows, it will see one 160GB drive. You then Partition it to your liking

[img width=450 height=332]http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/7456/raid22jo.gif[/img]

RAID 1: Is actually quite different. It Mirrors the first Drive exactly, there-by adding extra security in case of serious problems with the first drive. In this configuration, Windows would only see one drive of 80GB.

Setting up a RAID Array in XP/2000

Here is a full description of how to install RAID. (You Should Cut and Paste this to word and print it)

When the drives arrive and you have installed them to their SATA connections:

1) Get your Motherboard Manual
2) Start PC and enter BIOS
3) Look in manual and find where you enable RAID on the motherboard
4) Enable it
5) Exit and save to CMOS
6) After BIOS Post, the RAID BIOS will show. Press the listed keys to enter the RAID Configuration BIOS (your motherboard will show you what keys to press)
7) Listed in the RAID BIOS will be several options:
-Automatically configure a RAID setup (some RAID controllers only)
-Manually set up RAID Array
-Delete RAID Array
-Exit
8) Select manually set up RAID Array
9) Make these choices:
-Select RAID 0
-64K Stripe Size (64k is the best performing size for all applications, especially video files and gaming)
-Select the drives
-Select the Array to be a Boot Device (only available on some RAID Controllers)
-Save
-Place Windows CD in CD Drive
-Exit RAID Set up utility
10) After boot, windows will begin to load, at the first blue screen; it will ask you to press F6 to load RAID drivers. Press F6
11) Once windows finishes placing info to memory it will show the screen to load the drivers for RAID. It will ask you to press "S" to load new storage device, press "s"
12) A new screen will ask you to place floppy in and press enter, do this
13) It will then show the drivers, press enter to select
14) The previous driver entry screen will appear showing your selected RAID drivers; press enter to allow windows to finish loading its file to memory
15) Continue entering a clean install of windows and select your partition size
16) Format partition with NTFS and load windows to c: (once drive is formatted and windows loads files and wants to reboot, remove floppy)
17) Allow windows to boot and begin proper install (Do not press a key to run from CD at this point)
18) Once it boots into windows desktop you can begin regular installation of your programs, no other extra steps are needed.

The topFive Tips from Promise

Advice on configuration from the RAID experts.
Promise pioneered the use of low-cost ATA drives in RAID arrays, enabling high-end performance at one-half to one-third the cost of SCSI drives. If you?re already using ATA RAID, then you know it?s a cost-effective solution for kicking up storage system performance. And, if you?re into maximum performance, you?re probably using RAID 0. Storage system performance is directly related to the hardware you use, but there are still some good rules that apply to all hard drives. Here are some tips from Promisewww.promise.comthat should ensure you?re getting the most out of your RAID 0 storage.

(1) When using P-ATA drives, configure the drives as Master drives, with one drive per channel. Using Slave drives will increase overhead, reducing performance.
(2) Use the RAID 0 array as a data drive and not as the boot drive. When the operating system and the page file reside on the boot drive, it creates overhead that can diminish the performance of applications like Adobe?s Photoshop and Premiere.
(3) Using the page file on RAID 0: If you are using multiple RAID 0 arrays?either four drives in Master/Slave (ATA) or four drives as Master on a SATA RAID controller, we recommend the following:
Boot to onboard IDE
Use array 1 for page file (experienced users only)
Use array 2 for the data drive, applications, games, and more
(4) When using Windows XP, turn off the System Restore on the RAID 0 array. System Restore monitors the disk (array), reducing performance.
(5) Use single partitions. Using multiple partitions reduces application performance because you are running I/O to more than one partition on the same disk (array). If you use multiple partitions, do not move the page file to any of the ?partitions? on the array where your applications or games are running?this will prevent you from getting optimal performance.
In conclusion, we have found the speed of the RAID 0 to be a welcome addition to our systems and we look forward to the addition of SATA Generation 2 (300Mbps) in the coming year.

Setting up a Promise RAID Card:

1) Best Block (stripe) size for Promise controllers: 64K or 32K
2) After install of OS, go to www.promise.com and download the P.A.M. (promise array manager) and install it but with one change, during install, select custom install not complete, then two pages later you can uncheck the LAN monitoring part, then complete the install
3) Open P.A.M. and navigate to your array as shown Here and at this page, change the cached setting from write through to write back. Press Submit and exit program and reboot.
4) Turn off System restore and defrag all partitions twice, now test your array.

The reason you need to do this is, Promise by default has caching enabled, this will slow down your array, they do this because it is the most stable. Intel however, has caching disabled, this is why some find the Intel faster.

If You have any question's feel free to ask in the forums