Upgrading To Raid 0

I'm interested in upgrading my new P-6860FX to a raid 0. First off I'd like to know about the consequences. If the harddrive is destroyed, as I have read it can be...what will I have to do to fix it? Just buy a new harddrive or will the entire PC be done?

I currently have a 320GB 5400rpm HD, unknown brand. Do I just need another HD with those same specs or are there more details I'm missing?

Thanks!

 

You need two identical harddrives for raid to work in a laptop. You can have heterogeneous raid in desktops, but not in laptops. Having two identical drives yields the highest performance.
However you must realize that RAID 0 may have a 100% increase in performance in synthetic benchmarks, it is really only 7-10% faster in normal use.
This low performance is because basically every laptop which supports RAID has software based Raid. There is only two laptops which have hardware raid, The clevo d900t and d900k. The d901c has software raid, which is a downfall, since the prevout k and t models had via hyperion chipsets which had hardware based raid controllers. Hardware based raid controllers can give anywhere between 60 and 100% performance gains in real life performance, which is much more than any software based raid controller can do.
Unfortunately your laptop has software based raid controller, so the performance increase will not be that much.

Security:
Your raid array will only die if one of the harddrives physically fails. If this happens, you will have to replace the broken drive with an exact replica, which works. Then you have to destroy everything on the array with the raid controller, and then you have to format and reinstall windows.
Repeated blue screens or improper shut downs can also cause your raid 0 array to crash. Raid 0 is dangerous cause the chances of a drive failing doubles, and once the array is lost all of the data is gone. This is because half of the data is stored on each drive.

Raid1 is usually chosen since, if a drive does in fact fail, the other one will still work and have all of the data. This can really be a lifesaver.

However if you still want raid 0 I suggest backing up all of your data on an external drive every week, just so you dont loose anything super valuable on your drives.

To find out what harddrive you have, go to my computer and go into the hardware tab, and you will see the model number of your drive.
You can also just open up the harddrive bay and see what drive your system uses.
You only have a few possibilities. It is either made by Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung, Fujitsu or Toshiba.
I am betting it is a Western Digital, since another member with a 6860-F had WD's in his laptop.

K-TRON

 

So I'm looking at a 7-10% speed increase in everyday usage? Will it be a greater increase for gaming?

I can't seem to find the hardware tab you're describing.

 

It will be beneficial in loading times, but it will not be that noticeable.
I dont own that exact laptop, so I cant tell you for sure how to get into the Raid manager.
I know on my laptop I have a hardware based raid controller, and after the Bios boots, a large black screen comes up, and then it says: "Press TAB to enter the RAID CONTROLLER"
Then it scans for the drives and then scans to see if they are healthy, and then continues from their to boot ther operating system. It takes 25 seconds or so to scan the array every time the system loads, so it can be annoying.

Even software based raid controllers need a raid manager, so you should just keep an eye out when your system boots, it should be an option.
If nothing appears, you will have tyo go into the Bios and enable "SATA RAID" Once this is enabled you should get some kind of extra boot screen which scans for a raid array.
You will have to use the raid manager to create an array over the drives

I hope this helps,

K-TRON