Not sure if this has been asked before, and I apologize for bringing it up again if it has, but I'm planning my build for late May and was confused about this issue. I want about 1 TB in storage and was planning on getting 2 640GB WD HD's. My question is whether or not I should set them up as a RAID 0 (Motherboard RAID, not an add-on card) or leave them as separate drives and place the windows swap file on one. Which one offers better performance? If it matters, I do a lot of photoshop, gaming, and this build will also serve as an HDTV.
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RAID 0 vs. 2 Seperate HD's
- Thread starter berndawg3
- Start date
I run RAID 0, and I am quite pleased with it. I have run it on my last 5 builds, and have had no issues. I even have it on my laptop. It most cases, I feel it to be noticeably faster. Obviously, it won't speed up anything not related to the hard drives, as in no higher frame rates while gaming. In some rare cases, running them separately will be faster, but overall, not the case. There will be many people that will tell you that you are asking for a total loss of data and the sky is falling and one of your drives are gonna die because you have two and you double the risk of failure blah blah blah. Bottom line there is you're not safe with any setup unless you properly backup your data. More opinions to follow, probably many differing from this one. Good luck. 
Thanks man. Well, I'll be running 2 regardless and I'm using an external as a backup for my important storage. I've heard that it makes your system feel more responsive, I was just curious what people thought between the 2. Thanks for your input!
Like I said I have run it for my last 5 builds. I think that covers about 7 years. Never had any problems with it. If you've got an external backup go for it. I'm willing to bet most of those that recommend against it have never tried it. They'll link to benchmarks that say it is no faster. From experience, I know it is faster. You could make the same argument for SLI. I could find benchmarks where it is no faster. Some things make more difference than others. It cuts down the time it takes to run a full virus scan by about half. For me anyway. I'd be running a 4 disk array if I could fit 2 more drive in the case. Once you go RAID...