Mirroring SATA drives

[iamjd]

I just purchased two HITACHI Deskstar 7K250 14R9463 160GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 HDDs and wanted to put these in RAID. I have been trying to find resources for information about different types of raids (0 and 1) and which is better. I am not really a gamer. More of a programmer/graphics designer. Also finding the benefits of the two, I would like to know how to set up these different types of raid. Does anyone know of any sites that can lead to helpful information to help answer these questions or any questions that I may have overlooked? Thanks!!

 

[rclarke250]

Fast and quick, Doesn't matter if you are a gamer. Raid 0 is striped, the data is is written with half of the data stripe to drive a and the second half to drive b. suposedly increasing your read and write speed as each drive shares the transfer. In truth, and this has been proven by several well respected sites, this is great for huge databases in large companies, It can actually be slower to a gamer, or anyone else in a single PC setting. but only by 2-3%. As for Raid 1...better for protecting data. As the data is actualy mirrored to both drives, the draw back, is those shiney new 160's that you could get 320 GB from, still yield 160 GB. There is no such thing as better, there is better for the application you are trying to achieve. What do you need? something that has 320 GB's of storage, but no protection, so if one drive dies, you in effect will loose all data stored on both, unless you are smart and use another means of backup. Or 160 Gb's of storage and be somewhat protected in the storage as you have a duplicate of the data and 1 drive failing you still have everything. raid 0 is not really raid, as there is no redundancy.