Fast RAID arrays

[andylister]

I'm rebuilding my (gaming) PC and would like some advice on RAID arrays. Speed is the prime concern in what I'm doing.
The relevant components that I'm using are:
DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra B mobo with onboard Silicon Image sil3114 raid controller,
2x WD 74GB SATA Raptors,
2x Seagate 160GB SATA Barracudas,
Athlon XP 3200+,
Windows XP Pro.
My initial thought was to stripe the two Raptors and use them for O/S, program files, swap file, etc, and mirror the two Barracudas for secure storage of data.
I'm wondering if one of the Barracudas can be used to mirror the RAID 0 Raptors?
Is it best to use Windows XP Pro's software RAID control or the software from Silicon Image?
I've heard that the best stripe size to use with Windows is 64Kb, does it make a difference?
Any comments on the best way to do this would be greatly appreciated!

[vass0922]

from what I've heard RAID0 used for normal purposes like gaming really won't give you any performance and DEFINATELY not worth it given the chances of losing all your data on both drives if one drive dies.

You say using RAID0, but you're talking about mirroring which is RAID1
Unless you're going to do RAID0+1?
Do realize you will lose HALF of your HD space with the mirroring config.

RAID0+1 may actually hinder performance for you as it has to write all data twice, so chances are you don't want to mirror.

RAID0 works best in a file server environment where it has to serve MANY files very quickly.. whereas for a personal machine its minimal benefit with high risk.
MAKE SURE you have backups!

Regarding file cluster size, I'd just leave default as you'll most likely be accessing small files anyways.

[andylister]

Thanks for your reply.
To clarify on the RAID types:
First option - RAID 0 (stripe) the two Raptors in one array (for program files) and RAID 1 (mirror) the two Barracudas in another (for data).
Second option - RAID 0 the two Raptors in one array, then have one of the Barracudas used to mirror the Raptor array... The remaining Barracuda might be used as extra storage.
I guess that your RAID 0+1 solution would come in as a third option: stripe the two Raptors, stripe the two Barracudas and have the Barracudas mirror the Raptors. Done this way though, I imagine that I have to partition the Barracudas or "loose" the difference 170+ GB of storage?
I'd also guess that any RAID array that involved mirroring (RAID 1 or RAID 0+1) would suffer a performance hit due to writing the data twice?

[Strawbs]

not sure what setup is best for your situation, but this site explains the pro's and con's of each!

RAID.edu

[sechs]

Informal research shows that more users who consider using a RAID 0 array would get more performance out of using the drives separately.

[andylister]

Thank you all for your help and advice.
I rebuilt my PC last night using the SIL 3114 controller to RAID 0 the Raptors and RAID 1 the Barracudas. All seems to have gone well. Once I've burnt it all in, I'll benchmark and see if there's been an improvement over my previous set up which used an ASUS A7N8X deluxe mobo, with the two Barracudas in a RAID 1 array. From your advice, I'm expecting an improvement - though exactly how much will be difficult to quantify since I've also upped my graphics card from a 128MB Herculese Radeon 9800 Pro to a 256MB Asus Radeon 9800XT...