Ralph_Machio

Hi, I'll be doing my first build here in the recent future, and I'd like to setup a RAID configuration. From what I understand it's possible to setup a boot drive separately from a RAID config (correct me if I'm wrong). If this is true, I'd like to setup a RAID 0, 1,0, or 5 using HDDs having a SSD as the boot.

I'm looking at Gigabyte Sniper 2 or Assassin for my motherboard.
I do a lot of A/V production and gaming.

Any suggestions and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Judas

generally i find the real benefit to raid is for those without an SSD and planning on using it for their boot drives...

the only other use for say raiding would be for file backup purposes.

Or if your doing video editing or something that is going to heavily depend on hardrive speeds..

Personally i've ran Raid 0 for years always with 2 or more drives... most i've ever raid 0'd was 6 drives as my main.

If your using an intel chipset such as the ICH7/8/9/10R, you can raid 2 or more drives, and split them into 2 different volumes... such as raid 0 any number of gb of data you wish, and then raid 1 the remaining, or vice versa.. or raid 1 everything or 0... or what have you..

the raid 0+1 requires 2 smaller drives and 1 single drive that can fit the combined amount of the 2 smaller drives (for best results in the speed + backup)..

Raid 5 is imo better for several drive raid giving you performance + some security..

raid 0 of course is totally unpredictable with 0 security, one drive fails.... all data lost.. but gives the BEST peak performance.

Really depending on what you want to do.... it's up to you.

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Ralph_Machio

Thanks Judas,

Because of the AV work and gaming I'll be doing on this PC, speed and security are both vital. That's why I was curious about an SSD as a boot drive. I can't afford a bunch of SSDs nor would that provide enough storage space. I'd love for my applications to run at the pace a SSD could provide, and have over a TB of secure memory. Again, I know so little about this. I just guessed that would be a logical setup if it was possible.

Sihastru

What you need is to setup the SATA controller in RAID mode from the motherboard BIOS, fresh install the OS on the SSD, then install Intel RST, then you'll be able to configure a RAID1 inside the RST interface.

For RAID1, there is the option to use the OS software RAID1 option, you can setup that once the OS is installed from the Disk Management console. For this software mirror option, you only need to have the SATA controller setup as AHCI. You can use IDE too, but AHCI will provide TRIM support for your SSD.

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