Need help upgrading harddrive ?

A

ady1966

Geek Trainee
Hello !

I have an MSI KT3 Ultra - ARU (MS-6380E) ATX Mainboard (VIA KT333 Chipset based). I have a 2000XP+ AMD Processor and 1024mb RAM.

At present I have Western WD400 Hardrive of 40gb attached in the normal manor to IDE1. I have a CDRW Drive and a DVD ROM Drive connected as well.

On the board it has 2 ATA133 RAID Connectors IDE3 and IDE4. If I got a 2nd WD400 drive could I make use of the RAID function. Would it make much diference to performance ? And.... how would I install it and balance the system ?

Any help would be appreciated.


Regards

Ady
 
There are many different levels of RAID and each offers different advantages and drawbacks. Your controller offers two levels: RAID-0 and RAID-1. A RAID level-0 is synonymous with striping, meaning the two drives act as one, big, double-fast volume. The drawback is that if one drive fails, to your data it's just as if both failed. A RAID-1 is a mirrored array, meaning you have twice the redundancy, half the volume, and no added performance; the system simply writes the exact same data to both volumes. If one fails, you're still alright.

The onboard RAID controller you have is a software RAID controller, meaning it doesn't do any RAID functions in hardware, but in the device drivers in your OS. This lends your RAID to the same kinds of troubles one normally has with Windows drivers (meaning it can be a very touchy thing). Generally speaking, it is unwise to trust anything important to a software based RAID, at least in Windows. This is especially true if your bootable volume is also part of the RAID.

Some things to consider...
-AT
 
Thanks for that AT

I think I will just buy a new single faster drive to replace thye old one.

When transfering the information from one drive to the other is it best to set the new drive as the slave and then copy from one to the other ? or use one of these new fangled programs ? !

Your opinion would be appreciated,

Regards

Ady
 
Yeah, just copy it over. It's the simplest way, not to mention the cheapest. The programs I've used before that copy the OS over as well always worked funny for me. You will need to format the hard drive first, and here's how:

Right-click 'My Computer'-->Manage. Go to Disk Management. You'll see all the drives hooked up to the computer here. Right-click on the drive you want to format. The menu that pops up will give you an option to format the drive. Use NTFS, unless you happen to be dual booting with Windows 95/98/ME.
 
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