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Geek Culture / raid cards

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bitJericho
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Posted: 7th Apr 2009 00:17 Edited at: 7th Apr 2009 00:23
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Hey all,

For my gaming rig, I want to setup a raid array. I have 3x 80gb SATA 1.5gb/s disks. I'd like to set them up in a raid 0 configuration for speed. They won't be holding data that I can't easily recover (it'll be holding windows and game installations, but no important data). It needs to be a PCI card and will be running on Vista Ultimate x64.

I'm looking at raid cards on newegg but I'm at a loss. I want something with onboard memory (as I heard that's pretty important if you want any kind of speed gain). I'm hoping to spend 50 bucks or less on newegg.com.

If there's none that fit my needs for under 50 bucks, what's the cheapest I can do?

Thanks!

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Phaelax
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Posted: 7th Apr 2009 01:50
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Doesn't your motherboard support raid? Most boards I've seen in the past several years typically support Raid 0 and 1. Another option is to simply replace all 3 harddrives with a single drive. Considering a budget of $50, you can buy a 250GB SATA2 7200rpm Seagate on Newegg.

[url="http://dbcc.zimnox.com"][/url]
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bitJericho
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Posted: 7th Apr 2009 01:57 Edited at: 7th Apr 2009 02:02
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Unfortunately my mobo does not support raid.

A larger HDD did cross my mind, but my goal is to decrease load times, which a 3 way raid I would think would be much faster than a single drive.

I guess a good question would be, is it worth getting a raid card for raid 0 if the card that has no built-in ram?

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bitJericho
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Posted: 7th Apr 2009 02:15
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Alright, I'm leaning towards this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132013

Is it possible to setup a raid 0 configuration with 3 drives, or do they have to be in pairs?

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Phaelax
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Posted: 7th Apr 2009 02:18
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Did some research, and from what I've gathered most are saying RAID 0 adds little to no performance/speed gain except in specific cases. What those cases are I have not been able to find out.

I would probably stick with a raid card which has at least some memory on it, simply for the increased safety of write operations. I'm not sure how much of an issue that would really be for systems these days. Keep in mind the more drives you have on raid 0 the higher the risk of losing it all since if one goes its all lots.

[url="http://dbcc.zimnox.com"][/url]
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Phaelax
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Posted: 7th Apr 2009 02:19
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From what I understand, you can use 3 drives; doesn't have to be in pairs like a set of EDO sticks.

[url="http://dbcc.zimnox.com"][/url]
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bitJericho
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Posted: 7th Apr 2009 02:51
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Hmm, ok. Upon researching further, I think I'm gonna pass, I can't afford one with memory, and even if I could, it looks like most of em that I've found can only be used on specific supported mobos.

Perhaps I'll just buy a high speed drive

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