Raid

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SlitheryDee

I'm thinking about buying a second HD and setting up a Raid array. Seems like an inexpensive way to upgrade, but I'm not clear on something. Will I be turning two HDs in one faster HD with the combined capacity of the originals , or will I be simply creating one faster HD with the same capacity as the original? I mean will it be like 60gb + 60gb = 120 gb and twice as fast, or 60gb + 60gb = 60gb and twice as fast. Thanks.
 

airfoil

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2001
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RAID0 (striping) = 60 +60 GB striped across 2 hard disks, total capacity 120 GB, faster overall, definitely not twice as fast. Speed increases noticeable only when using large files and/or sustained disk activity.

RAID1 (mirroring) = 60 GB, same data exists on 2 drives for redundancy.
 
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SlitheryDee

Thanks for the quick response airfoil. That's exactly what I needed to know.
 

SrGuapo

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2004
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Don't expect 2 x disk performance. maybe 10% better tops, which will lower load times by a second or two, if that... If you keep any im portant data on the hard drives, make sure to back up religiously. RAID0 inherently fails twice as much as a single HDD.

The only place I could see RAID0 providing a noticable boost is when moving large files around fairly often (video editing or something).
 
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SlitheryDee

Well, I kinda figured it wouldn't really be twice as fast. Even if it only offers a marginal speed improvement it seems like the way to go, cuz a 60gb hd is considerably cheaper than a 120g. My computer is used strictly for gaming, so it wouldn't ruin my life if RAID0 failed. Thanks again guys.