RAID setup

[Jim]

Okay, I'm thinking of setting up a RAID 0 setup on a KT7A-RAID mobo.

I'll be having two IBM 60GXP 61.5GB drives that I want to work together. I'll also want one of my Creative 12x dvd-rom drives, as well as an IDE burner which I'll be adding soon (not sure which one).

What's the BEST setup I can have for these four drives?

The two hd's as primary and secondary masters, and the two cd drives as slaves?

The two hd's as primary masters and slaves, and the two cds as secondary masters and slaves?

?

The top performance priority IS the hd's though, obviously. But I'd like decent performance out of the others as well...

[smaier69]

the best configuration for all the devices would be as so.....

the two 60GXPs on their own channels of the RAID controller (both set as master. set as RAID 0). the other 2 IDE devices on their own IDE channels on the regular ATA100 IDE controller (also each set as master).

this way, each device has its own IDE channel. therfore, each device will not be incumbered by communication of another IDE device sharing the same channel.

this without question will be the fastest, most flexible and least problematic way to go.

[YeOldeStonecat]

///Nods with Smaier///

You'll love RAID 0....welcome to RAID 0

Usually treat the RAID controller as a separate IDE controller. The Abit has a special blue or orange color marking the RAID controller if I remember right. I have a Promise PCI FastTrak, so can't tell by mine.

If you didn't have the RAID option, and you wanted your 2x drives with 2x cd-roms, then you'd have to sacrifice something. By rule of thumb, you want to keep your faster hard drives by themselves, not mixed with other slower atapi devices. Meaning if you take an ATA-100 hard drive as master, throw on a IDE cd-rom as slave...that controller will step down the speed of that bus to the slowest device. So I'd want to keep both ATA-100 drives on one bus, the cd-roms on the other. But you enter another dilemma now....when you have a cd-burner, if you ever want to copy a disk from your other cd, you end up getting terrible performance if they are on the same channel. So if burning cd's is your primary concern, then you'll be stuck putting main HD and one cd on channel 1, second HD and other cd on channel 2. Here enters the degradation of performance when stuffing your box with so many drives.

But you're golden, because you have the RAID controller setting you free, and letting you put a cd on each of the other standard controllers....quite the ideal setup.