IDE RAID

One killer way to get lots of speed is to purchase an IDE RAID card. This allows the data you store to be distributed among multiple drives so you can read the data twice as fast (or faster) depending on how many drives you put into a RAID configuration. We like to use the Adaptec or Promise controllers for our IDE RAID.

First you will need to determine the type of RAID you want. For more information on RAID types please refer to the parent Drive Performance Page.

Next you need to purchase an IDE RAID Controller. Many times you can get a RAID controller built in to the motherboard. But if you already have all your PC components and have to buy one, I would recommend the controllers made by Promise. It is the FastTrak100 TX2 - this only allows for RAID 0 or RAID 1. If you are looking to build a RAID 5, you will have to invest a bit more and get a SuperTrak100.

You cannot just take your computer down, hook up the existing drive to a RAID controller along with a few more drives and expect it to work. To put a RAID Array together you will have to reinstall a fresh operating system on the Array. However if you do not want to do all that work, just drop in the RAID controller, get 2 new IDE drives and use those to store all your games and music files. Then at least your games will play and load really fast but your boot up times will not improve.

Article last reviewed: 12/23/2002

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