[Leon05]

My new system is currently being built, and I have asked the builders to put the two 74GB drives that I supplied into RAID 0. I know that RAID 0 supplies optimal performance, and I was also led to believe that two HDs functioning in RAID 0 function as one larger drive in terms of disk space, as in that these two 74GB HDs would add up to a total of about 150GB of space. One of the technicians, however, explained mirror (1) and striping (0), then told me that striping will cause only a total of 74GB in total, which doesn't make sense to me. Is he right or is he getting mixed up with RAID 1/Mirroring? I don't think I'll be too happy with only 74GB of space...

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Raid 0 uses striping. This means that if you have two drives of 74GB set up as a striped pair, then the total available disk space will be 74GB x 2, so nearly 150GB in total.

If however the drives were mirrored instead, then you would only have 74GB in total to store data to, as all data on one drive would be mirrored on the other drive.

[Samm]

Raid 0 uses striping. This means that if you have two drives of 74GB set up as a striped pair, then the total available disk space will be 74GB x 2, so nearly 150GB in total.

If however the drives were mirrored instead, then you would only have 74GB in total to store data to, as all data on one drive would be mirrored on the other drive.

[Kemasa]

I am not sure of why you think that AID0 (there is no redundant) provides optimal performance. With a PC I doubt that it will have much of an effect, plus there is some overhead associated with it, but you need to realize that if you stripe it then if one drive dies you lose everything.

You can typically get a better effect by splitting what you are doing between the two drives, such as programs on one and data on the other.

As Samm said, he is getting confused.

[warriorscot]

RAID0 doesnt actuaklly give great performance and its not for home users really the best performance is from a mirrored array as yes it loses you a drive but it can load simultaneously from two drives, its the only real option to RAID really. Its not fro home users its a business solution more than anything. Mind you 150Gb is still not alot the difference between small space drives and large is insignificant usually you can double the drive size for a price increase of about 20%.

You say 74Gb which makes me think you might be after raptor drives, if you are this isnt a good idea, raptors are not a good buy they are not the fastest drives on the market in terms of performance(the new 16mb sataII 7200rpm drives are faster) and there are better larger drives for much less.