RAID worth it?

Thinking about getting another KK266, I am considering to spend the extra $15 or so on the RAID board. I actually have two identical 30GB IBM drives that I could stripe. Now here is my question: In terms of performance I do understand that transfer rates do improve. However what about disc access? In particular for small files wouldn't it take longer to look and assemble a file from two disks, rather than from one?

Yo

Well, you have two questions here. The first, is it worth it? In your case, sure! You've already got the two matching drives so for the lousy extra $15 go for it.

The second question shows excellent intuitive reasoning. You've exposed one of the dirty little secrets of RAID, it's effect on small writes to disk. Yes, throughput for these types of transfers will take a hit. But, overall you'll get much better performance with RAID 0 over a regular IDE setup.

By the way, good choice with the Iwill. I don't have one myself, but I put one together for a friend. Luckily Newegg shipped me one of the good Rev 1.2 boards with the correct resistors. He could of used the RAID, but had some SCSI stuff laying around so IDE wasn't really an option.

Here's an link that provides an simple explanation of the common PC RAID modes and some performance results: