Advise on setting up Raid 0+1 or 1+0 please

[JNMann]

i know how to set up a Raid 0 but would like a 0+1 or 1+0 (advise on which is better please!) to enable full resilience and performance benefits.
Do I just create 2 separate raid 0's and then create a raid 1 to encompass them both?
I am using 4 x WD Raptor 10k 36gb drives. (Does it matter that one of them is 74Gb? I understamd the raid will treat it as 36Gb)
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance,

[ACtheTROLL]

your mother board will support only certain raid levels
(look at the book that came with it ... or on the website)

raid 0 gives speed but no resil
1 gives resil but no speed
both with little processor input
however
without a dedicated controller 0+1 becomes is a bit of a compromise ... the processor has to run the raid array as well as everything else .... plus 0+1 does increase read & write times ... so the system could loose it's punch

unless you are running a server the raptors are wasted in anything but a raid 0
(I assume you bought them for perfirmance?)

raid is always better with matched discs ...
personally I'd install the OS on a single disc ...
and raid 0 with the other 3 ... then install games to the raid set.
this makes disaster recovery easier and you still get the speed.
alternatively
why not run 3 in a 2 volume raid config and backup important folders to the 74?
(do it every night .... and it's still pretty resilient)
that way you don't have the overhead of 0+1 s;owing things down

[JNMann]

Many thanks for the advice. Performance is main thing but having had problems in the past I thought the mirror image would be a good idea. I've read many reports on the web about whether to raid raptors or not and generally they seem to show a performance increase when raided.
I'd like to try it as 2 drives in raid 0 and 2 mirroed, just to see how it goes, how do I set up the mirrored raid? must it be done at same time as initial os install?
Thanks again,
Justin

[ACtheTROLL]

undoubtedly raid 0 will give significant increases
but
0+1 use a relatively 2hungry" instruction set (not as bad as 5 ... but significant) and the read is slower
so you loose on the swings ...
using complex raid on an os vol has mixed opinions if not using dedicated controllers

generally you can only implement raid on a new volume ... so you'll loose everything you have now
with the mobo you should have drivers, a floppy and a manual
some you hit f6 during post - it varies
but most now use a wizard ... so it's quite straight forward

then trying to boot and access an installation on a raid vol can be fraught with problems ... do you have a floppy disc?
(you can't use a CD)
you are to an extent chasing the dragon ... in reviews "faster" is a relative term
one disc could be 0.1 x10-15 the other 0.2x10-15

one is faster than the other .... but ....even an atom will have problems splitting them

if you have the time you should try
think up a task (ie copy a dvd to a folder and then the duplicate the folder) time it ....

and then decide

[boobesque]

you dont have to cerate new volumes to use raid. Just use the microshaft computer management mmc and select disk manager. Right click on the partition you want to use raid with and select to create mirror or whatever then you will be prompted for which other disks to use.

also it doesnt matter if all of your disks are a different size. It will still work but mirroring different sized disks will give you problems when one becomes full so you should partition the bigger disk(s) to make them the same size.

Im not sure which OS your using but windows server can use raid 5 (maybe vista too, i dont know) which is like raid 0 but uses parity to restore a disk after disk failure. Only one disk can fail though and you need a minimum of 3 disks, one of which you will lose the use of as one third will be used for parity.

In your case, assuming that you dont use server, i would personaly use raid 0 over 3 disks and create occasional images using ghost or true image or any other imaging software to the 3rd disk

[ACtheTROLL]

software raid is extremely resource hungry
and without a dedicated raid 5 controller .. your machine would run noticeably slower.
it's impossible to mirror discs volumes of different sizes.
but in most cases the software will tell you what it needs.

boob ... your mmc "mirror" extension is created by the raid utility you installed with the mobo drivers - it's not part of xp (or server)

I've never seen a raid utility that didn't reformt - the file system is very different to fat or ntfs....
but then ... powerquest will convert ntfs to fat ... so I suppose it's possible