dalest wrote:ok but does it work with external DD?
Hello Eric,
Have a read about advanced storage options, including external drives:
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/a-begi ... d-storage/Several companies offer bays for housing several HDs which can be operated as a USB3 RAID.
I have only experience with Win7 and RAIDs of internal drives and so I refer to that.
I have chosen to use a RAID with internal drives because it is the cheapest solution: the housing and interface are already present. USB 2 is far to slow for an external RAID bay and USB 3 would do but I still experience a lot of inconveniences with USB 3. Obviously SATA3 connections of the motherboard are still the fastest way.
In case you want to explore the route of internal RAIDs I give below a summary of my experience.
Internal RAID is limited to a NEW installation of the OS where from the very beginning of installation the disks are grouped as a RAID. That is essential because otherwise the RAID driver will not be installed and you cannot install that driver and change your system afterwards.
Standard, Windows installs with the HDs in so-called IDE mode. You can change that in the BIOS (BEFORE the installation of Windows) from IDE to AHCI or RAID. Both IDE and AHCI are modes which treat each HD as a separate disk. Only RAID mode allows that groups of HDs are seen by the operating system in a different way. RAID mode exists in some 10 variants which each their own advantage. The typical advantages are either a safer operation (same information shared on 2 or more HDs so if one fails the other(s) still keep the information and the failed HD is automatically repaired by the system if possible), or the data is spread over 2 or more disks which means that writing and reading goes twice or three times as fast but failure risks increase as well. There are also RAIDs (with 3 or more HDs) which combine both systems - so both safer and faster - but you need several HDs for that. Typically a motherboard has 6 SATA connections for drives. So if you use one for your C-drive and one for your CDROM drive, 4 are left for - i you wish - a RAID data arrangement. For very professional systems you can install a RAID PCIe card - better, faster but expensive.
As I wrote before I use a RAID-0 arrangement where the info is spread automatically over 3 HDs, though the OS sees them as ONE disk. They get one name and one letter designation together. As Richard wrote the OS spreads the info over the 3 HDs when writing and searches and combines them from the 3 HDs when reading.
As a consequence, this RAID-0 is almost 3 times as fast as a single HD, BUT the risk of failure is also approx. 3 times as high. If one of the 3 HDs fail, the RAID breaks and all data are lost.
I have taken that risk, because the RAID only contains the installed and cached sample sets, which I have on DVD (or a spare external HD) anyway. All critical data should NOT be put on a RAID-0.
I use this 3 RAID-0 now for 2 years and not once has it failed me. Practically speaking it functions as well as a third-generation SSD (my speeds are in the order of 500-600 MB/s), but with 3TB capacity!!!
HOWEVER - you must be well experienced in tweaking Windows, prepared to experiment, to install Windows twice or thrice if you have bad luck, and to investigate which RAID parameters (stripe and format size) works best for you.
There is a lot of info on internet but it WILL cost you time and effort.
It is for a good reason that Martin Dyde warned and said that they don´t give support to this arrangement. And he´s right.
So you´re warned.
A RAID is a promise of low cost high performance, and a misery if you can´t handle it.
All the best.
Ernst