newbie needs help

[Uncle Bob]

I know almost nothing about raid. I've done enough research to
know I want to give it a try. I need some step by step instructions
Can someone please(and thankyou) direct me to a source of BASIC literature.

Present Fixed Disk System:
P4M266 Via Tech MoBo
Celeron 2.2 400fbs
2.5gb ram available
WD 40gb HDD X3
Pioneer DVD
pioneer DVD Burner
100mb Zip
750mb Zip
Win 2000 Pro OS

Have lots'nlots of questions

what motherboard do you have?

then you will need a raid card if you do not have one on the motherboard on board. you will you have to decide which raid setup you want to have

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html

one thing raid works the best is to get the same size hard drives and same speeds. (some people reccomend to get the same manufacture but a western digitial and maxtor will work fine together)

[Omardeth]

is there a reason you want to do it , or just for gp .

[Uncle Bob]

Mother Board is Via tech. P4M 266
I have 3 WD 40gb. I have a promise fasttrack 133 tx2 2ch
I plan on raid 0 setup.

[Uncle Bob]

To Omardeth:
I want to go to raid mainly as a learning experance. Also grins&
giggles

[Uncle Bob]

When setting up a raid array is a hard drive needed at the IDE
connection? Could my DVD drives go there and my zip drives go
to the secondary?

[Gait_Keeper]

the hard drives and the optical drives should be on different ribbon cables,
1st decide which RAID you want to use.

you can get a IDE controller on a PCI card, so you don't have to go changing your zip and optical drives

[MrPurple]

Since you are thinking of doing RAID 0 and you got 3 disks you have to be warrned that you may suffer performance drops and even data corruption since two of your drives will be sharing an IDE channel. My sugestion is to only use two of your drives for the RAID, and use the third one on your standard mobo IDE channel for backup purposes.
If you are dead set on using all of your drives in an array, than you should buy another 40 gig WD drive so that all drives are synched nicely.

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by MrPurple
Since you are thinking of doing RAID 0 and you got 3 disks you have to be warrned that you may suffer performance drops and even data corruption since two of your drives will be sharing an IDE channel. My sugestion is to only use two of your drives for the RAID, and use the third one on your standard mobo IDE channel for backup purposes.
If you are dead set on using all of your drives in an array, than you should buy another 40 gig WD drive so that all drives are synched nicely.

I am not set on using all three drives. I am set on using both of
my DVD drives AND the two Zip drives. The two raid Hdd will run
from a Promise Fast Trak 133 Tx2 2 ch card. At this time the three
Hdd's are in mobile racks, three different OS's.

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by Gait_Keeper
the hard drives and the optical drives should be on different ribbon cables,
1st decide which RAID you want to use.

you can get a IDE controller on a PCI card, so you don't have to go changing your zip and optical drives