question on which raid to use

[D_Maniac]

I have a 74 gb raptor drive and was thinking about buying a second one to run in raid for better performance..which RAID would i have to use?

[mavalpha]

From a theoretical standpoint, RAID0- striping- offers the highest performance. However, it sacrifices a lot in security, and modern hardware has already reached a point where striping together two high-performance drives offers little gain- I won't say none, but it's very hard to justify the extra price and risk.

[omz]

From a theoretical standpoint, RAID0- striping- offers the highest performance. However, it sacrifices a lot in security, and modern hardware has already reached a point where striping together two high-performance drives offers little gain- I won't say none, but it's very hard to justify the extra price and risk.
agreed...do u really NEED the raid? my friend was raiding 2 80gb WD's in raid-0 (stripe) and they failed...lost alot of data...but now he has a new rig and its a watercooled shuttle :D

[defakto]

DManaic, there is a sticky in the forum on raid 0, I suggest reading it.

[DougLite]

No, the sticky is in hiding :D

However, RAID-0, as measured by Storage Review, has some significant performance drawbacks. In seek dominated game loading, RAID-0 actually reduces performance compared to a single drive, as running RAID-0 increases the impact of rotational latency and throws off the buffer strategy of the drives. Gains in productivity (office/content creation) are typically less than 10%, often no larger than simply moving to a single physical disk that is twice as big.

Coupled with the increased chance of failure/data loss, increased cost, increased driver complexity, and mixed bag on desktop performance, RAID-0 isn't worth it for desktop power users and gamers.

If you multi task heavily, add independent spindles to service additional tasks. If you want better performance and you're using a 7200RPM drive, look to the WD740GD. If you've already got WD740GD, look to WD1500ADFD. Performance boost is bigger with none of the drawbacks of running RAID.

[djnes]

raid for better performance..which RAID would i have to use?
You definitely should do more reading about RAID before you go spending that kind of money. As others have said, read the sticky first, and use that as your starting point.