Duel Hard Drives!!!

[clutchdoctor]

Ok, this might go over some poepls heads...maybe...probobly not since i'm guessing more than the majoraty of people here are like me and know a little about computers. i'm trying to put in two HD into my computer, i did succed, and it worked great, too good to be true, and it was. when i restarted it my Master hard drive switched with my slave drive. I've tried several things and i cannot figure out how to get it back to work the way it was. I'm still trying, and might firgure it out, but i would like to hear all of ya'lls input on this, maybe it'll help me along.

P.S. i would make the hard drive i had as slave the master and just forget about it, but my programs for the other drive don't start up and my drivers are missing, basically i'd have to go find htem again. Thanks in advance for any help :)

[crjjguy]

Did check the settings in the BIOS?

[crjjguy]

did YOU..I mean

[Virtuous]

I've noticed the ata100 cables are very peculiar about the orientation of the drives on the bus. If it is color coded I think the blue end goes into the mobo and the grey or middle connector goes to the master.

If I were you I would leave the old drive as master and the new one as slave.

[craigwarren]

Check the jumpers on both of the hard drives, rather than leave them as cable select, set them to master and slave respectivly, this way theres is no ambiguity and the system is set as you want it.

[Overmind1984]

Craig's solution is you best bet.

Usually, if the cables aren't seated right, the drive won't be detected.

[totality]

i wish i had duelling hard drives. oh, did you mean DUAL hard drives? :D

[TYRIAL]

ok i wanted to know if i was insane,,,at one point i heard from a friend that it was posible to syncronize your 2 say, 80 gig hard drives, in an effort to make an insanely dast comp :woo: so... is this just a boys dream or is this a valid question....hmm just got a 74 gig scici drive 10k rpm....wanted to go faster yet.... :rolleyes:

[JohnnyX]

ok i wanted to know if i was insane,,,at one point i heard from a friend that it was posible to syncronize your 2 say, 80 gig hard drives, in an effort to make an insanely dast comp :woo: so... is this just a boys dream or is this a valid question....hmm just got a 74 gig scici drive 10k rpm....wanted to go faster yet.... :rolleyes:

Do you mean Disk Mirroring?

Cheers. :)

[Tika]

ok i wanted to know if i was insane,,,at one point i heard from a friend that it was posible to syncronize your 2 say, 80 gig hard drives, in an effort to make an insanely dast comp :woo: so... is this just a boys dream or is this a valid question....hmm just got a 74 gig scici drive 10k rpm....wanted to go faster yet.... :rolleyes:


Is dast meaning fast ? :D

Hard drive space isnt really what determines speed. Unless of yourse you have such a small hard drive that you run out of virtual memory :eek: . Its more about your RAM and processor that determines your speed.

[Greg-VT]

I think you are talking about RAID... a basic run through....

Yea, you can link two hard drives up to make one. This uses RAID and is called data striping (??). It spans the data across two drives. You can have a 2x 20gb hard drives, then make them appear as one. You will see 1x40Gb drive. No real speed increase.

Or it could be what Johnny said, which is drive mirroring (again through RAID). One drive per other drive is required. So if you had a 20gb drive, you would require another. Now everything you write to the first drive will be exactly copied, or 'mirrored' onto the 2nd drive. You will only see 1x20gbGb drive. No real speed increase.

[Tika]

Greg: Isnt that for backing up data not for speed?

[Greg-VT]

Yeah, thats right. Its the only thing I can come up with in regards to what he's saying. Don't know how to join to drives together to make it go faster.... so I assumed this could be closer to what he's after (the striping: 2x20 = 1x40).

Believe it or not, but I've had customers confuse hard drive space with speed :D

[Tika]

Greg: Oh I believe it. :D I remember what I used to think about computer related stuff hehehe.

[TYRIAL]

Yess i do understand that speed is not related to the size of your hard drive..(and yess i made a mis type (dast...FAST)) I believe what i was trying to talk about was the system thet greg was talking about..

I have a decent processor and memory but once i heard of another possible path to speed i was just excited and since i already have 2 hard drives i was thinking..why not.. but upon hearing that there is no real speed increase (or even if there was not a very noticable one) might as well just leave it as is....besides i also was told that this system through raid or w\e can also cause more problems than its worth.. :cry: (another post full of mistakes im sure :D )

[JohnnyX]

Disk Mirroring (RAID 1) has slightly slower write performance than a single disk. However, disk reads are significantly faster than a single disk.

Cheers. :)

[JohnnyX]

Defrag can speed up a single disk configuration.

Cheers. :)

[hongkongfuey]

For speed your options are data striping (RAID 0) or data mirroring (RAID 1)

Data striping spreads your data accross the two disks. For example, one file could be partly stored on disk 1 and partly on disk 2. If you use 2 X 20Gb drives in this configuration, you will get 1 X 40Gb partition, and it will be quick for both reading and writing. However, if EITHER disk crashes or loses data, you will lose the data from both disks (as you will only have half of each file - not much use!)

Data Mirroring stores identical copies of each file to both disks. So a file is saved to disk 1 and disk 2. This is slightly slower for saving, but quicker for loading files, as the file can be read of both disks. Disadvantage here is that 2 X 20Gb drives will give you 20Gb of storage as they both will contain the same things.

You can do hardware RAID or software RAID - hardware is faster, but will require a motherboard that supports this, or a separate controller card (Promise have a good name in this area). Windows 2000 / XP can setup drives in a software RAID config, but you wont get quite the same performance as by using a dedicated card. The following link has some details about setting it up.

http://members.home.nl/rvandesanden/raid2.html

There are other RAID configs used in the enterprise, with the main ones being 0+1,5 and 10. Most of these are well beyond the home users budget though (although RAID5 is starting to become available with SATA drives)

[Greg-VT]

Just adding to what HKF said...

For speed your options are data striping (RAID 0) or data mirroring (RAID 1)

Data striping spreads your data accross the two disks. For example, one file could be partly stored on disk 1 and partly on disk 2. If you use 2 X 20Gb drives in this configuration, you will get 1 X 40Gb partition, and it will be quick for both reading and writing. However, if EITHER disk crashes or loses data, you will lose the data from both disks...

Later forms of RAID (RAID 3 and almost non-existent RAID 4) provides a prevention measure to the data loss issue if a drive fails. RAID 3 writes parity information to a portion of the array (usually the last drive), which allows a single disk failer in the array to be tolerated.


RAID 5 also uses parity information, but this is for disk mirroring only, and the parity information is spread accross all the drives in the array. It kindly offers a performance drop for this service :D.

For speed with what you have now (and if you don't mind the risk of data loss in the event of a failer) go for RAID 0.

Otherwise, get some SATA drives :D whooooooosh

[hongkongfuey]

RAID 5 also uses parity information, but this is for disk mirroring only, and the parity information is spread accross all the drives in the array. It kindly offers a performance drop for this service

Raid 5 only offers a performance drop in comparison with RAID0, but at least delivers some measure of fault tolerance. If you have 5 drives in a RAID array, then you get the perfomance of about 4 drives combined (with the 5th essentially being parity checking), and the storage of 4 drives. Most mid levels servers employ RAID5.


Otherwise, get some SATA drives whooooooosh


Although the hard drive will not fill the bandwith of SATA (or even ATA100), so a RAID configuration (of some sort) is still going to be an improvement.

[Greg-VT]

Although the hard drive will not fill the bandwith of SATA (or even ATA100), so a RAID configuration (of some sort) is still going to be an improvement.

Yea, although you will still notice an improvement with SATA over PATA. Either way, if you don't have at least two drives and Windows 2k/XP, your going to need to buy something.

RAID 3 and 5 would be slower still then 0 with 2x drives...

So, a question about RAID and speed; would the increase in performance be noticable with RAID 0 with only 2 drives?

[hongkongfuey]

Yea, although you will still notice an improvement with SATA over PATA. Either way, if you don't have at least two drives and Windows 2k/XP, your going to need to buy something.


and SATA cables are sooo much nicer! :D

So, a question about RAID and speed; would the increase in performance be noticable with RAID 0 with only 2 drives?

you should notice the most difference going from 1 to 2 drives - above this you will start to gradually saturate the SATA bus.

[JohnnyX]

I've installed many RAID5 systems - Great for Fault Tollerance and High Availablility.

Basically, there is an overhead of one disk per RAID5 Array. However, the minimum configuration is 3 disks.

For example,
If you have 3 x 20Gb Disks, then the storage size is 2 x 20Gb = 40Gb.
If you have 8 x 40Gb Disks, then the storage size is 7 x 40Gb = 280Gb.

The beauty of RAID5 is that if one of the disks fails, the system continues to run (with alerts and alarms usually telling Administrator that a disk has failed :D ). Providing that you replace the failed disk before another one fails, the system can rebuild the data on the replacement disk for you - clever.

Cheers. :)

This was my 1000th Post. :cool:

[Greg-VT]

and SATA cables are sooo much nicer! :DIndeed :D

I've installed many RAID5 systems - Great for Fault Tollerance and High Availablility.

Basically, there is an overhead of one disk per RAID5 Array. However, the minimum configuration is 3 disks.

For example,
If you have 3 x 20Gb Disks, then the storage size is 2 x 20Gb = 40Gb.
If you have 8 x 40Gb Disks, then the storage size is 7 x 40Gb = 280Gb.

The beauty of RAID5 is that if one of the disks fails, the system continues to run (with alerts and alarms usually telling Administrator that a disk has failed :D ). Providing that you replace the failed disk before another one fails, the system can rebuild the data on the replacement disk for you - clever.

Cheers. :)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt that RAID3? Striping over disks with one extra for parity.

RAID5 is Mirroring with fault tollerance, but instead of one dedicated disk for parity, (ie.RAID3) its spread accross all drives.


Congrats on the 1000 :D

[JohnnyX]

Indeed :D


Correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt that RAID3? Striping over disks with one extra for parity.

RAID5 is Mirroring with fault tollerance, but instead of one dedicated disk for parity, (ie.RAID3) its spread accross all drives.


Congrats on the 1000 :D

Well that means that I have been doing it wrong for over 6 years. :(

I think not. :D

Cheers. :)

[Greg-VT]

Well that means that I have been doing it wrong for over 6 years. :(

I think not. :D

Cheers. :)
We're both wrong ;). You better take a hard look at those 6 years, Johnny* :p. :D

RAID5 Requires at least 3 drives. RAID5 is Disk Striping (my mistake). Although, it uses all 3 drives for data storage. It also uses all 3 drives for parity information - it's spread accross the 3 drives.



*j/k btw :p

[JohnnyX]

We're both wrong.

Nope. I am far from wrong matey. :eek:



RAID5 Requires at least 3 drives.

I believe that I said, "However, the minimum configuration is 3 disks." in my post.



RAID5 is Disk Striping (my mistake). Although, it uses all 3 drives for data storage. It also uses all 3 drives for parity information - it's spread accross the 3 drives.

I believe that's why I said, "Basically, there is an overhead of one disk per RAID5 Array." in my post.


Cheers. :)

[Greg-VT]

I believe that I said, "However, the minimum configuration is 3 disks." in my post.


I believe that's what you said too.

I believe that's why I said, "Basically, there is an overhead of one disk per RAID5 Array." in my post.
Sounded to me like you were saying it has one pysical hard drive dedicated to being that 'overhead'.


What you were describing could have easily been mistaken for RAID4.

[JohnnyX]

Sounded to me like you were saying it has one pysical hard drive dedicated to being that 'overhead'.

What you were describing could have easily been mistaken for RAID4.

Thanks for alerting me.

I shall endeavour to make myself better understood in future.

Thanks again Greg-VT. :)

[Greg-VT]

Thanks for alerting me.

I shall endeavour to make myself better understood in future.

Thanks again Greg-VT. :)
Wasnt an alert, just a self realisation.

I'm currenty doing 3rd yr IT certification here, and I tend to pick at bones to get even the most minor of details, trying to brush up. ;)

Sorry if I sounded picky, I wasn't being. Just trying to get the most out of what I'm doing. Practice ;)

[JohnnyX]

I'm currenty doing 3rd yr IT certification here, and I tend to pick at bones to get even the most minor of details, trying to brush up. ;)


Sounds very much like me. However, I have been doing I.T. for 20 years now. :D

Cheers. :)

[Yukimushu]

Only thing i can think of is the following:

Double check Main HDD jumper is set to Master & 2nd HDD is Slave.
Check ATA cables are in right way around (normally theres a red strip on the side, that strip should be facing out of the case (left).
Make sure you've made the appropriate changes in your BIOS to set master slave & so it boots from main hdd.

Other than that im kinda confused as to why it'd work at first, then decide not to. Computers are too temperamental lol.

[Albert]

Ya know whats even cooler... DUAL VIDEO CARDS! Wahahaha! :D

[YODA]

Nah - dual keyoards - one for each hand - Wooooooooooo....