Raid of a different type

[Zario]

I know we have several resident computer experts here and I was hoping to get some feedback about setting up RAID 0 on my desktop.  My load times are slower than I'd like and think it'd be fun to make a project out of this.  I have two identical 120gb PATA drives and a 300gb PATA drive.  I'm running Windows XP Home Edition SP2.  My computer is a bit older though with AMD Athlon XP 3200+ with 2gb Ram and an ATI 1600 Pro 256mb.  From what I've read, my hardware doesn't support RAID 0 so it would have to be a software implementation. 

Is it possible to run my 2 120gb drives as RAID 0 and the 300gb as a slave?  Do I need any special software or drivers to do this?   

[Kothnok]

Short answer: yes.

If you are looking to improve disk performance, using software RAID will only slow things down, not improve disk access.  RAID is meant for robustness and easy disaster recovery.  The cost of that safety net is a degredation in speed (since it needs to write the same information to different hard drives).  This is mitigated if you have hardward support, but going strictly software means you're going to slow it down.

[Zario]

I was under the impression that RAID 0 would have striped data so that you have two hard drives reading a writing their own portion of the fragmented file.  Theoretically this would allow files to be accessed nearly twice as fast because two drives would be accessing the data at the same time.  I'm not looking to add RAID 1 or any other system where duplicatopm of data is the goal.

I can see how all those instructions headed to and from the processor and disk drives could bog down the processor.  But in terms of WoW, how hard is the processor working on other tasks when it's loading a map?

[voctovian]

Short Answer
Yes, you can run RAID0 on your 120GB drives and have the 300GB drive also available.  This will give better performance than 3 independant drives.

Detailed Answer
It has been a while since I have checked the Microsoft XP features matrix, but I am not sure that you can use software RAID0 with Windows XP Home as your boot drive.  Even if it is supported, but would likely involve formatting the RAID 0 using the system booting from another hard disk (or perhaps using BART).  I would stongly advise you against trying this, rather, you should invest in a harware array controller.  The vendor that I have had the greatest success with is Promise (they may have been purchased since I last worked on them).  You might find that a motherboard with an embedded array controller (often promise chipset) is more economical.  This definitely will work.. one of my kids computers users this configuration (2x120gb disks, RAID 0, embedded Promise PATA array controller, Windows XP Home).  On that computer, the RAID0 did improve the performance of the system somewhat.

From a performance standpoint, this does improve load times if the system is currently disk bound.  As an aside, you may also want to check that the drive is not fragmented. 

If you have any further questions, ask away.