raid setup & fat32/ntfs question

[ozispimp]

hey all,

very new to the raid world.. basically would like some info..

1) which raid setup combines two drives.. is it 0 or 1? i plan to combine 2 30 gig drives into a 60gig
2) i'm purchasing an abit mobo w/raid built in.. how do you setup raid, is it through win xp.. or through the bios?
3) if i combine the drives, will it show up as one drive letter.. if so, how can i see each individual drive to make sure it's being split properly

last question about ntfs, if i'm running strictle win xp pro.. will it be better to run ntfs? do some programs require fat32? which is faster and more efficient?

thanks!

 

[Snickle]

RE: last question about NTFS, WinXP can't create partitions over 32GB but can use them when created with a Win98 boot disk before installing WinXP. NTFS is said to be slightly slower but has much better folder/file security available.

 

[tsmi]

Raid 0 (Striping) is combining more than one drive for speed rather than Raid 1 (mirror) which is for data redundency. Your raid card should come with a driver diskette that is loaded during WinXP setup, you will be asked to insert any SCSI or Raid driver diskettes. After the driver load and format, your array will show up as one volume that can be formated or partitioned like any other single drive. To see how individual physical drives are being used, you need a utility that may or may not come with the raid card. I don't know of any generic program to do that but would guess there is one out there.

Berton is right on about NTFS being a bit slower than FAT32 but the security benefits of NTFS far outway the small decrease in speed IMHO. I know that I have created NTFS partitions as large as 160Gb in WinXP but I think you are limited to 32Gb in FAT32.

Tony