Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
If price to performance ratio is what you seek, Raid0 is a BIG! waste of money. As the increase in performance (currently) is minimal, as is well documented in AnandTechs article mentioned above.
That doesn't mean however that Raid0 is a bad thing!
I have to disagree with their recomendation of Raid1, I think this is a total waste. Why?
1. twice the price 1/2 the storage space
2. performance loss due to dual writes
2. its too easy to back up your critical files (work files, banking info,etc..)to DVD or a second harddrive
3. most decktop users don't have alot of critical data on their hardrives. You can always reload OS and
applications from disk.
4. the whole reliability issue is blown out of proportion, with quality harddrives the MTBF rates are in the
100,000+ hours range. for the average user at say 4 hours per day, that equates to about 1 failure
every 68 years. Raid0 every 34 years. If you left it on 24/7 in raid0 the avg is 5.7 years. I have had
7 home machines in 20 years and never lost a hard drive. I have lost 1 harddrive at continous use in
20 year work career.
Raid0 has value in that if you already have 2 hard drives and a mobo with onboard raid, you can get a small performance boost for 0$, and have the horsepower to spare in the odd chance you do transfer very large files or do video editing. This has become even more atractive with the newer mobos supporting raid for different size and type hardrives.
I also believe that upcoming 64bit operating systems and applications will considerably increase the I/O load on the SATA bus potentially increasing the performance advantage of Raid0.
Although with the current state of desktop technolgy Raid0 is kind of like driving a ferrari in city traffic, it shouldn't be looked at as a bad investment.