Not RAIDing?

[Bling]

I have 2 36 gb raptor hard drives that were freshly Rmaed so they are the new revision. I am constructing a new computer and i would like to allocate money elsewhere from the storage. ( I have had an old 80gb Ide drive for years and never filled it) Ive heard that raid 0 shows no real advantages for gaming and general use. I'm at odds as to whether i should Raid them or not ( Having just one 75 gb partition is easier to work with) Ive been hearing little things here and there about havingtwo seperate drives and not having raid. Is there something i should do to increase performance or ease of use that i would notice?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Well, if you can sell the 2 36's and get a single 74, that would improve performance and get you a single partition. Raid 0 is not really a performance improvement for many things, and you more than double the chance of losing data as compared to a single disk.

But if you've got a backup strategy or don't care about the data, running raid or JBOD will give you the single partition you're looking for. But figure out the backup strategy *first*.

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

^ yeah mage makes some nice points. Basically, I too agree that Raid 0 is not a good idea for desktop usage as the performance gain is practically 0 in real life (synthetic benches set aside). However, in your case RAID might be worthwhile for the purpose of combining the drives into one larger and more manageable partition. 36gb is kinda small these days. Plus, the platter density on those 36gb raptors is quite low and as such modern 7200rpm drives with high platter densities (250gb+ drives) can perform at about the same levels. Ideally, I would try to sell them and get a larger drive or just put them to good use in other boxes of yours and purchase a larger drive.

 

[hulksterjoe]

I think the sell 2 and get a single larger drive is a good option...or just use them as they are..OS on one and data on another.. that ide drive can still be used as a storage drive