RAID0 or JBOD? (SATAII Drives / ASUS P5Q Deluxe)

[LUCI5R]

Ave,

I have two SATAII Hard Drives in my system ... 320GB & 640GB.
I want to basically combine them into One.

Can I use RAID0? If I do ... is it true that I will looe the lessor drive space completely? In my case, that would be 320GB. Would I completely lose that space?

With JBOD I know for a fact that I can combine the two drives and get 960GB. However, I don't know if my ASUS P5Q Deluxe supports it ... and if it doesn't ... is there software I can use?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks guys.

[3Z3VH]

JBOD is the only choice when you have mis-matched drives (unless you count the Drobo "BeyondRAID"). Otherwise, you are going to have to deal with the loss of the extra space on the larger drive, and worry about timing issues between the two drives. I would never recommend RAID of any level on mis-matched drives.

[LUCI5R]

JBOD is the only choice when you have mis-matched drives (unless you count the Drobo "BeyondRAID"). Otherwise, you are going to have to deal with the loss of the extra space on the larger drive, and worry about timing issues between the two drives. I would never recommend RAID of any level on mis-matched drives.

.. that being the case, how can I setup JBOD? Do I need specific software? I'm assuming I will lose whatever data I have on the two drives as well, correct? And lastly ... is it possibly to go back to "Normal" state from JBOD (Or RAID for that matter) if you need to?

Thanks!

[3Z3VH]

It should be a function of the controller you plug it in to, so either your motherboard, or add-on controller card's BIOS. Failing that, I believe XP and higher versions of Windows allow you to create dynamic disks using Disk Management, and you can just dynamically link one drive's contents to a folder on another drive letter.

It isn't easy to simply revert to individual drive operation. The Directory Structure is only stored on one drive. If you wanted to convert to individual disks, you can run any one of the utilities that scans your drive for files and rebuilds your partition tables on the drive that does not have the partition table already on it. It isn't terribly tough, but it is way more work than you will want to do more than once.