RAID 0 with redundancy possible?

[GiganticPanda]

I recently decided to try setting up a RAID array on my computer for some extra performance, although this is something that I have very little hands on experience with. I have ordered two 500 gig drives, and was thinking of setting up a RAID 0. Although not a problem per say, a 1t.b. boot drive would be way overkill for my purposes. Ideally what I would like to do is partition each drive in half, stripe the first partition on each drive, and use the second partition for redundancy. So far in my research I have not found a good way of doing this. I would use RAID 5, but I don't have four drives. I have read that similar setups, such as RAID 0+1 also require four drives. Does a separate partition count as a second dive? If not, is there any way that I could still make a setup like this work, maybe through software? I appeal to the many minds greater than my own who frequent these boards for any thoughts or suggestions on this topic.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Even if you partition a RAID-0 stripe, you will have no redundancy. You'd need to back up your data some other way or, run a RAID0+1 set up. And, you have to have a minimum of 3 drives for RAID-5. Unless you need hot swap capability, RAID-0 is probably overkill for you. RAID 0+1 or RAID-0 regularly backed up to a single drive are probably your 2 best options.

 

[Zap]

I think you can do RAID 5 with three drives.

With two drives, typically you can do RAID 1 or RAID 0. If you run Linux, you can do MD RAID 10.

 

[Nothinman]

The only way to RAID partitions is with software RAID and while that's not a problem in itself, desktop versions of Windows don't let you use any redundant RAID levels.

 

[RebateMonger]

RAID 10 is the most common setup that combines the features of RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring). RAID 10 is typically done with add-in hardware RAID controllers and requires four drives.