Q about Raid

[myanimator]

Hello...
I am new to the whole RAID thing as far as my personal machine goes. My new MB has an onboard raid controller. I've been using SCSI U2W disks in the past and I was thinking about buying some IDE drives and creating a raid array of disks. I do a lot of video and animation so it could come in handy. Anyhow I have searched online for info but I was wondering what is the best pairing of drives. Would it be faster to have two large disks or 4 smaller (given all are running @ the same speed)? Any input or direction would be great!

thanx

[RWSchlatter]

First check which devices your controller supports, IDE and/or SCSI.

Then decide what you intend to have RAID for, data security or access speed.

My very personal statement: RAID will deliver somewhat faster on read operations, but it has to be matched to the processor speed too. J don't think you will notice much improvements on a personal machine. By this J mean it may be measurable in parts of a second, but your reaction time at the user interface will hardly notice this.

Following Adaptec info may help you make a decision:
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/markeditorial.html?prodkey=quick_explanation_of_ra id>http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/markeditorial.html?prodkey=quick_explanation_of_ra id</a>


______________
Regards - Richard

[RWSchlatter]

another reference that contains considerations on performance for raid (from this entry page, use the Contents button to find your way thru this documentation):
<a target="_blank" href=http://discovery-uk.com/Raidhelp/>http://discovery-uk.com/Raidhelp/</a>

______________
Regards - Richard

[myanimator]

Richard...

The board I am getting is the abit VP6 (http://www.abit-usa.com/english/product/motherboards/vp6.htm)which supports RAID for IDE drives. I am mainly hoping to use this to dump video and renders out. I already have two U2W SCSI drives that I run my OS and apps on right now. The advatange that I see it is that IDE drives are real cheap right now and Win2k does a pretty good job of striping disks.

Thank you for the links...the 2nd one is proving most informative.

Please let me know if you have any additional information or suggestions for this type of scenerio

thanks :)