TIPS/SUggestions for RAID-0???

[MtX]

I was thinking of doing RAID-0 after I get my 2nd western digital 80gb 8mb cache hard drive.. but im having second thoughts, because i hear that it improves performance (windows load times, appz/gamez load times) but im unsure, because if it's really THAT good, everybody'd be doing it.. (like when the 1700+s came out)..

im gettin another 80gb hd cause i need more space for games, storage, etc.. im debating whether i should just get a 120gb since its $20 more or get the 80gb and also use it as raid-0.. i dont really get how raid-0 works tho.. if i have 2 identical 80gbs, will it be turned into a single 160gb hd? or will there be a C: 80gb and a D: 80gb? if its one single 160gb hd, will i be able to partition it and will transfer of files from one partion to another partion take longer or much faster? i need clearcut answers before i do raid-0 because the advantages dont really look obvious..

i was readin thru the abit faq and i came up to this :"Also like RAID-linear, it offers no redundancy, and therefore decreases overall reliability: a single disk failure will knock out the whole thing".. does this mean if one wd 80gb hd fails, the other one will fail too and i just lost 2 80gb hds and i have to go spend $$ to replace two hds?

THANKS GUYZ!

[Cjwinnit]

RAID (Reduntant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is a way of making a set of hard drives look like a single disk on a computer.


There are a few types, the 2 popular ones for desktop systems are:

RAID 0 "Striping"
- Gets 2 (or more) identical disks and formats them as one disk. two 80 Gb disks look like one 160 Gb disk, for example. The data is shared equally through the array, by "Striping" the data. One chunk goes to one hard drive, the next chunk goes to the other, and it interleaves. Think of a deck of cards, dealt out to two players. The people are the disks, the cards are chunks of data. If you want to read the whole pack, you need the cards from both players, so if one fails, then you lose the ability to read all the data, and the data from only one drive is pretty-much meaningless.

RAID 0 arrays are very fast, mine did 55 Mb/second on a good day. Remember, if one hard drive breaks, you lose ALL the data.

RAID 1 "Mirroring"
- Takes 2 disks and copies the data identically to both hard drives. Two 80Gb drives look like an 80Gb disk in Explorer. If one drive breaks, the other still has the same data that the failed drive had and so you keep the data. Used when data is very important.

There are other types as well: 3, 5, 0+1...


If you decide on a RAID 0 array, backup and store the important data. RAID 0 is fast but a little less reliable..

If one drive breaks you still have the other drive. It's not a case of one drive breaking means all the drives break, it's just the data on the other drives sometimes relies on the other drive working.

[MtX]

so if one hard drive is corrupted, you only lose that one.. the other one can still be formatted and reused... but all the data is messed..

[Cjwinnit]

Originally posted by MtX
so if one hard drive is corrupted, you only lose that one.. the other one can still be formatted and reused... but all the data is messed..

Correct (in the case of RAID-0).

If you back up your stuff already though and you wouldn't commit suicide if one of your drives died, RAID 0 might be worth a look. It is noticably faster. If you want backup, RAID 1 is apparently good but I haven't tried it.

[MtX]

personally i wouldnt use raid 1, i dont have the money to waste to use one hd as backup.. i need the 80gb for space!