raid setup question

[Spawn-Inc]

i think this is the right spot... i've noticed that hdd prices have dropped and wanted to know a couple of questions. some of you know i just got a EVGA 680i board and it has a built in raid ?card? or w/e.

1. i currently have a 250gb hdd and was looking at another one. with the price dropped to 69.99 (CDN) for the same one, can i get 2 and put them in a raid config and have the third one by itself? so i would have 3 total and 2 on raid (not sure which one, i know mirror is for performance whats striping for again?) and the third as storage?

2. with the price of two 250's should i just get 1 raptor?

[Jim Beam]

mirroring is for safety so that if one drive dies you can just put a new one in and rebuild array with no loss of information. striping is when you send something to be written and it writes part of the file to one drive and part to the other drive. this increases write speed almost two fold. And yes you can have 2 drives in raid config and one by itself. Not sure about the raptor though, if you can afford it I would get 2 of those in raid configuration.

[slytherock]

Most of the time I don't like THG, but they have a nice comparaison here. I think it might answer all your questions.

[Spawn-Inc]

ok so lets say i get 4 250gb hdd's i use 1 for storage 2 for a striping raid and the 4th one for a backup of the striping? (i assume you can back up the striping)

[slytherock]

yes, but 2 250 in stripping is 500...

[Spawn-Inc]

ohh right its mirror, hence the name, that you only get the amount of 1 drive. are the only benifits of mirror the safety of having a backup? has anyone here ever lost any data using striping?
+rep btw for all the help thusfar.

[Redundant]

I suggest RAID 0+1.

It uses 4 drives for mirroring and striping. Redundancy and Speed.

[slytherock]

has anyone here ever lost any data using striping?

I've lost data a couple of times, but I do backups on external drives once a week... And everytime I've lost my raid, it was cause of a dead HDD, not cause of the setup.

[OvRiDe]

Alot of your questions may be answered in this thread...

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/f...ead.php?t=7783

The choice of what RAID level can be tough. It all depends on what you really want from the system, and what you will be doing with it. Check out that thread and see if it helps.

[Spawn-Inc]

well for now i think i will work on the rest of my computer and just get a second 250gb hdd and have the first as storage. i should have posted this in there so if admins want to add it then do so. i was just wanting to know if you can have a raid and non-raid setup, which you can so it got answered.

I've lost data a couple of times, but I do backups on external drives once a week... And everytime I've lost my raid, it was cause of a dead HDD, not cause of the setup.

how long does a backup take? is there anyway to setup an auto back up. also how often do hdd's die?