A Few Computer Questions
DragonMech
Join Date: 2003-09-19 Member: 21023Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2003-09-19 Member: 21023Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">WinXP HE/Pro & RAID</div> As I'm typing this, my laptop is dying. No it's not going out in a blaze of glory, it's slowly decaying away. As it has done the four previous times it's broken. Long story short, this is my chance to get a new laptop that is a substantial upgrade to my current one.
Two questions come to mind as go about configuring my PC.
1) Operating system
I can't decide whether or not upgrading to WinXP Pro is worth it. It's roughly ~75$ more. How is it better than XP HE?
2) RAID configurations
I've been considering getting a second HD on my computer (it's not very important, but I'm considering all options). Would enabling RAID be of any help? Would RAID 1 or RAID 0 be better? What's the difference?
Enlighten me, O techno-wise ones.
Two questions come to mind as go about configuring my PC.
1) Operating system
I can't decide whether or not upgrading to WinXP Pro is worth it. It's roughly ~75$ more. How is it better than XP HE?
2) RAID configurations
I've been considering getting a second HD on my computer (it's not very important, but I'm considering all options). Would enabling RAID be of any help? Would RAID 1 or RAID 0 be better? What's the difference?
Enlighten me, O techno-wise ones.
Comments
2.) RAID requires extra hardware for it to work not to mention that it serves no purpose for home use unless you work at home or something. What RAID does is spans all the information onto all the discs pretty much so if one HD fails, the other recovers the data. With RAID 0, it's not a true RAID array as that it is not fault tollerant. If one disc goes out, bye bye information. WIth RAID 1, it is so slow and tacing on the system, it isn't of any use. All the other levels of RAID require many hard drives and all kinds of hardware. All RAID would do is make your computer slower, not provide any fault tollerance, eat up time and possibley money to have it set-up, and just give you a headache. RAID isn't that useful for the home environment where the average user wouldn't notice the change in performance. RAID is really for servers where faster I/O is key and where the higher levels with fault tolerance would benefit the company.
As far as RAID goes, there really isn't a reason to get one for your home PC unless you just have cash to blow and don't mind spending a few hundred extra dollars to get your pc slightly faster and/or have your data safely backed up. I'd say spend that extra cash on a top of the line video card.
Raid 0 strips the data and spreads it across two discs. This is essentially like having one hard drive with double the speed and double the capacity. The advantages are the increased speed and capacity. The disadvantage is that if one disc fails you lose all of your data.
Raid 1 mirrors the data so it writes the same thing to both discs. This is like having one disc with normal capacity and normal speed. The advantages are that if one hard drive fails, you don't lose any data. This is commonly used in banks and such. The disadvantages are having slower performance and less capacity.
Most motherboards have onboard RAID now. If you're buying new it won't be hard to find one. Other than that, you need two identical hard drives.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->All RAID would do is make your computer slower, not provide any fault tollerance<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How did you come up with that? All RAID 0 does is make your hard drives work faster, and RAID 1 protects you from a hard drive crash.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->All the other levels of RAID require many hard drives and all kinds of hardware.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually, all you need is two identical hard drives and a motherboard with onboard RAID, or a RAID card which costs around $20 and 5 minutes to install.