I'm looking at a new machine with two Western Digital 74gb 10k rpm Raptor
hard drives.
The machine will have an Intel P915pblr motherboard which supports RAID 0,1
features.

My question is regarding the configuration. I am under the impression that
I could partion the drives to where I run a set of RAID partions for speed
and another set of partions for redundancy.

I am mostly interested in the speed version...do you get a speed increase on
both reading and writing to the hard drives, or is it primarily with the
writing to the drives?

This is for gaming. Most of the MMO games are getting humongous and taking
forever to load. The writing is of little consequence (except to swap file)
and it is the loading that eats up the most time...either in getting the
game up, closing it or the time for it to load new zones.

Any comments or guidance please.

Thank you in advance.

<nospam@news.net> wrote in message news:<SWe7d.134$344.8@fe61.usenetserver.com>...
> I'm looking at a new machine with two Western Digital 74gb 10k rpm Raptor
> hard drives.
> The machine will have an Intel P915pblr motherboard which supports RAID 0,1
> features.
>
> My question is regarding the configuration. I am under the impression that
> I could partion the drives to where I run a set of RAID partions for speed
> and another set of partions for redundancy.
>
> I am mostly interested in the speed version...do you get a speed increase on
> both reading and writing to the hard drives, or is it primarily with the
> writing to the drives?
>
> This is for gaming. Most of the MMO games are getting humongous and taking
> forever to load. The writing is of little consequence (except to swap file)
> and it is the loading that eats up the most time...either in getting the
> game up, closing it or the time for it to load new zones.
>
> Any comments or guidance please.
>
> Thank you in advance.

I don't know much about RAID, but since nobody else has responded,
i'll try.

I don't know if you can do one type of RAID on 1 partition of a disk,
and another type of RAID on another partition of the same disk. I
doubt it.

What you could do, is install 4 hard drives. (it seems a bit
excessive, but i've heard of ppl doing it)
2 HDDs would use RAID 0 - striping - for speed.
2 HDDs would use RAID 1, they would duplicate the former 2 HDDs.

Course, there are only 2 IDE connectors on your motherboard, and 4
hard drives would use up all your connectors. (since you can only put
2 drives per connector). You could then get a PCI card with IDE
connectors on it for your 5.25" drives.

You could do it the other way around, using a RAID card, plugging
HDDs into that. And CD drives go in mobo IDE connectors. But I think
the connectors on the RAID card are less efficient - dunno why, since
PCI bus is not slower than IDE.

Take my words on this with a pinch of salt. I've never used RAID.

<nospam@news.net> wrote in message news:<SWe7d.134$344.8@fe61.usenetserver.com>...
> I'm looking at a new machine with two Western Digital 74gb 10k rpm Raptor
> hard drives.
> The machine will have an Intel P915pblr motherboard which supports RAID 0,1
> features.
>
> My question is regarding the configuration. I am under the impression that
> I could partion the drives to where I run a set of RAID partions for speed
> and another set of partions for redundancy.
>
> I am mostly interested in the speed version...do you get a speed increase on
> both reading and writing to the hard drives, or is it primarily with the
> writing to the drives?
>
> This is for gaming. Most of the MMO games are getting humongous and taking
> forever to load. The writing is of little consequence (except to swap file)
> and it is the loading that eats up the most time...either in getting the
> game up, closing it or the time for it to load new zones.
>
> Any comments or guidance please.
>
> Thank you in advance.

I don't know much about RAID, but since nobody else has responded,
i'll try.

I don't know if you can do one type of RAID on 1 partition of a disk,
and another type of RAID on another partition of the same disk. I
doubt it.

What you could do, is install 4 hard drives. (it seems a bit
excessive, but i've heard of ppl doing it)
2 HDDs would use RAID 0 - striping - for speed.
2 HDDs would use RAID 1, they would duplicate the former 2 HDDs.

Course, there are only 2 IDE connectors on your motherboard, and 4
hard drives would use up all your connectors. (since you can only put
2 drives per connector). You could then get a PCI card with IDE
connectors on it for your 5.25" drives.

You could do it the other way around, using a RAID card, plugging
HDDs into that. And CD drives go in mobo IDE connectors. But I think
the connectors on the RAID card are less efficient - dunno why, since
PCI bus is not slower than IDE.

Take my words on this with a pinch of salt. I've never used RAID.

<nospam@news.net> wrote in message
news:SWe7d.134$344.8@fe61.usenetserver.com...
> I'm looking at a new machine with two Western Digital 74gb 10k rpm Raptor
> hard drives.
> The machine will have an Intel P915pblr motherboard which supports RAID
> 0,1 features.
>
> My question is regarding the configuration. I am under the impression
> that I could partion the drives to where I run a set of RAID partions for
> speed and another set of partions for redundancy.
>
> I am mostly interested in the speed version...do you get a speed increase
> on both reading and writing to the hard drives, or is it primarily with
> the writing to the drives?
>
> This is for gaming. Most of the MMO games are getting humongous and
> taking forever to load. The writing is of little consequence (except to
> swap file) and it is the loading that eats up the most time...either in
> getting the game up, closing it or the time for it to load new zones.
>
> Any comments or guidance please.
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
>
> i read you get a faster read and slower write in raid 0 compared to a
> single hardrive system.

i'm getting a dell xps gen4 3.g ght,but i'm going with 2 hardrives without
the raid configuation. i'm also concerned about speed for gaming but think
the 3.6 ght should do the job .
hope you know if you have a hard drive crash in raid 0 you will loose all
the data on both drives.
In raid 1 you will have a copy of one hd on the other,which i dont want
becuase i'll be useing my second HD for video file storage.
go to google and type in "what is Raid" you should get lots of info
>
>
>
>

<nospam@news.net> wrote in message
news:SWe7d.134$344.8@fe61.usenetserver.com...
> I'm looking at a new machine with two Western Digital 74gb 10k rpm Raptor
> hard drives.
> The machine will have an Intel P915pblr motherboard which supports RAID
> 0,1 features.
>
> My question is regarding the configuration. I am under the impression
> that I could partion the drives to where I run a set of RAID partions for
> speed and another set of partions for redundancy.
>
> I am mostly interested in the speed version...do you get a speed increase
> on both reading and writing to the hard drives, or is it primarily with
> the writing to the drives?
>
> This is for gaming. Most of the MMO games are getting humongous and
> taking forever to load. The writing is of little consequence (except to
> swap file) and it is the loading that eats up the most time...either in
> getting the game up, closing it or the time for it to load new zones.
>
> Any comments or guidance please.
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
>
> i read you get a faster read and slower write in raid 0 compared to a
> single hardrive system.

i'm getting a dell xps gen4 3.g ght,but i'm going with 2 hardrives without
the raid configuation. i'm also concerned about speed for gaming but think
the 3.6 ght should do the job .
hope you know if you have a hard drive crash in raid 0 you will loose all
the data on both drives.
In raid 1 you will have a copy of one hd on the other,which i dont want
becuase i'll be useing my second HD for video file storage.
go to google and type in "what is Raid" you should get lots of info
>
>
>
>