To RAID-0 or not? (Not a Raptor thread)

[TeeJayHoward]

I've got 4x 5400 RPM 40GB HDDs. They're slow, they're old, and they heat up like a sonnabitch. The machine that they're connected to does two things: Folding@Home and file serving (via Windows XP's built in "file sharing" service). It's used to store a large number of 100-300MB video files, which are streamed out one at a time to my laptop via 802.11B.

Previously, I used each drive independantly (No RAID, is this JBOD?) and ended up losing a good 2-3GB per drive due to my file storage method (Storing 20 videos per folder, for example. If I couldn't fit all 20, throw em on the next drive).I've heard nothing but bad things about RAID-0. As the machine is Windows XP, and my attempt at following Tom's Hardware's Guide to setting up RAID-5 failed, I set it up in a RAID-0 set up. I like the fact that it's read as a single drive.

Should I stop using RAID-0? Should I just suck it up and ignore the 2-3GB loss per drive? Am I an idiot for going with a method that could easily lose my data?

Edit: I should mention that the RAID-0 setup is software-based. I don't have a controller for it. And no, I can't really afford to buy one.

 

[DougLite]

Especially on 5400RPM drives, which I presume are fairly old, RAID-0 is a really bad idea. Do you backup at all? RAID-0 is out of the question without backups. If you do have backups, this arrangement will work until one of the drives goes out, then just pop for one 160GB drive that will solve your problems for less than $100.

As for one drive letter, you are aware that you can mount a paritition/volume as a subfolder on a drive, as long as it is formatted as NTFS? You do this by simply doing one thing slightly different when you/create format your partitions, after you select the size, you are given the choice of assigning a drive letter, mounting to a folder, or doing nothing. Select the second option, and provide the location of an empty folder. That folder now has all of the space of your new partition, regardless of how much space is left on the parent drive. You can even do this with an existing partition by right clicking it in Disk Management, selecting "change drive letter and path" and then adding a new mount point. The data on the partition will instantly show up in the folder you choose, as will all of the free space on it. Also, you can move the partition to a different mount point or an entirely different comp without losing the data on it. Pretty slick, and since you already have your movies organized into folders, sounds like just the ticket.

 

[defakto]

Jbod will do the same thing for you also. It will show all drives as a single image, though, if one dies you losing everything on the dead drive. THe others will be ok.