RAID? Does My HDD Have It?

Dimension 8400 Series, Intel Pentium 4 Processor 640 (3.2GHz) w/HT
Technology and 2MB cache
160GB NCQ Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

Device Manager description of hard drive: ST3160023AS
Can you tell by the DM description which brand my hdd is?

During the research and ordering phase, I thought I saw the term mentioned,
however, I don't find it in the Order Details. From what I understand, it's
a sort of an automatic backup? Information is duplicated in case one drive
fails? Does this mean that one hard drive has two "platters" (I hope that's
the right term)? I'm sorry, but I can't quite tell if a RAID drive is
purchased as such or configured by connecting it to a controller card.

Monica

"Monica" wrote in message
news:mL2Ee.79425$%Z2.63555@lakeread08...
Dimension 8400 Series, Intel Pentium 4 Processor 640 (3.2GHz) w/HT
Technology and 2MB cache
160GB NCQ Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

Device Manager description of hard drive: ST3160023AS
Can you tell by the DM description which brand my hdd is?

During the research and ordering phase, I thought I saw the term
mentioned, however, I don't find it in the Order Details. From what I
understand, it's a sort of an automatic backup? Information is duplicated
in case one drive fails? Does this mean that one hard drive has two
"platters" (I hope that's the right term)? I'm sorry, but I can't quite
tell if a RAID drive is purchased as such or configured by connecting it
to a controller card.

Monica


You cannot run a RAID array with a single drive.

In order to run RAID 0, 1, or 0+1, you must have two drives.

Bobby

Putting ST3160023AS into Google returns:

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/...81,585,00.html

which means it is a Seagate drive.

This does not mean you have Raid 1 mirroring. Your machine is capable of it,
but that requires a second identical drive.

Tom
"Monica" wrote in message
news:mL2Ee.79425$%Z2.63555@lakeread08...
Dimension 8400 Series, Intel Pentium 4 Processor 640 (3.2GHz) w/HT
Technology and 2MB cache
160GB NCQ Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

Device Manager description of hard drive: ST3160023AS
Can you tell by the DM description which brand my hdd is?

During the research and ordering phase, I thought I saw the term
mentioned, however, I don't find it in the Order Details. From what I
understand, it's a sort of an automatic backup? Information is duplicated
in case one drive fails? Does this mean that one hard drive has two
"platters" (I hope that's the right term)? I'm sorry, but I can't quite
tell if a RAID drive is purchased as such or configured by connecting it
to a controller card.

Monica

A raid array is configured by purchasing two or more hard drives and
connecting them to a raid controller card. Lately, onboard SATA
controllers have raid capabilities, usually raid 0, 1 and 0+1.

Raid 0 takes 2 hard drives and stripes the data across both of them.
This means that if you have two 160gb hard drives, windows would see
one 320gb hard drive. Supposedly the performance increases with raid 0,
but it is a tiny performance increase - not worth the doubled risk of
losing all your data, since in the case of one of the hard drives
failing, ALL the data would be lost since everything is striped onto
the two hard drives.

Raid 1 uses 2 hard drives. Whenever you write onto one hard drive, it
automatically copies it onto the other hard drive. In the case of one
of the hard drives failing, you still have the other one, with
*everything* you had on the first one.

Thanks for the info guys
Monica
"Tom Scales" wrote in message
. ..
Putting ST3160023AS into Google returns:

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/...81,585,00.html

which means it is a Seagate drive.

This does not mean you have Raid 1 mirroring. Your machine is capable of
it, but that requires a second identical drive.

Thank you. I think I'll just stick with the "old fashion" way of manually
backing up to a second hdd and CDs
Monica
"maian" wrote in message
oups.com...
A raid array is configured by purchasing two or more hard drives and
connecting them to a raid controller card. Lately, onboard SATA
controllers have raid capabilities, usually raid 0, 1 and 0+1.

Raid 0 takes 2 hard drives and stripes the data across both of them.
This means that if you have two 160gb hard drives, windows would see
one 320gb hard drive. Supposedly the performance increases with raid 0,
but it is a tiny performance increase - not worth the doubled risk of
losing all your data, since in the case of one of the hard drives
failing, ALL the data would be lost since everything is striped onto
the two hard drives.

Raid 1 uses 2 hard drives. Whenever you write onto one hard drive, it
automatically copies it onto the other hard drive. In the case of one
of the hard drives failing, you still have the other one, with
*everything* you had on the first one.

Hi Monica,

There are a handful of ways to use RAID (Redudant Array of Independent
Disks), and the most common are 'striping' and 'mirroring'. Striping
uses two or more disks to make your system run faster. Mirroring
writes the same data to two disk drives so if one fails then you have
uninterrupted service by falling back to the working HDD. Gamers use
striping to get a little performance boost, and people with critical
data will use mirroring to save critical data. RAID was used mainly by
servers and businesses, but is getting more popular with home users as
HDD get cheaper.

Good to see you got a SATA HDD, but you'll need another to use RAID.
Your system should have come with RAID drivers installed. In the case
of my SATA drive, the RAID drivers get installed even if you don't use
RAID so you may already have them too. You can configure RAID in your
BIOS.

Hope that helps, good luck!

Monica Wrote:
Dimension 8400 Series, Intel Pentium 4 Processor 640 (3.2GHz) w/HT
Technology and 2MB cache
160GB NCQ Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

Device Manager description of hard drive: ST3160023AS
Can you tell by the DM description which brand my hdd is?

During the research and ordering phase, I thought I saw the term
mentioned,
however, I don't find it in the Order Details. From what I understand,
it's
a sort of an automatic backup? Information is duplicated in case one
drive
fails? Does this mean that one hard drive has two "platters" (I hope
that's
the right term)? I'm sorry, but I can't quite tell if a RAID drive is
purchased as such or configured by connecting it to a controller card.

Monica


--
legacy_programmer

Monica wrote:

Thank you. I think I'll just stick with the "old fashion" way of manually
backing up to a second hdd and CDs

Unless you *need* it, RAID's probably not for you.

One thing that should be mentioned about a RAID 1 configuration...

The second drive only comes into play when your first drive fails.
If you're (improperly) using the second drive as a backup drive,
and the data on you're first drive becomes corrupted, the second
drive will provide you nothing more than a "mirror copy" of your
corrupted data .

See ya!

Notan