Does RAID-0 put extra stress on a hard drive?

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Archgaull

Archgaull

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Nov 12, 2014
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So I'm running out of space on my current drives (WD Caviar Blue 1tb) and I'm considering purchasing another. However, if I do so I'd like to run it in RAID-0, to make it easier to find everything.

Everyone says that RAID-0 has a higher fault rate, but as I understand it, that is because if one drive fails, then it causes the entire thing to fail. However, my question is does RAID actually put additional stress on the hard drive, or is the higher fault chance just because one drive failing is catastrophic to it?

If I do decide to go with RAID, the only thing on the drive will be media, nothing important will go on it.
 
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Both.
Higher failure rate because a failure of 1 drive means loss of data on both drives. Also higher stress because a file written to the raid is spread across both drives.

Also setting up the raid will require formatting the drive, so any existing data will be lost(back it up first).
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ss202sl

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May 23, 2012
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Both.
Higher failure rate because a failure of 1 drive means loss of data on both drives. Also higher stress because a file written to the raid is spread across both drives.

Also setting up the raid will require formatting the drive, so any existing data will be lost(back it up first).
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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1. A RAID 1 should never be run without a strong backup plan. Unless it is just a hobby config to play with
2. Having your media on a seperate drive letter is sooo much safer. When you need to reinstall the OS, all that media stuff on the other drive is not affected. If it was all in one RAID volume....problems.
3. Is it dead easy to redesignate media in Libraries to default to another drive letter.
4. Or, 'Storage spaces' in Windows.

In answer to your question, no, it doesn't put any extra stress on it, other than constantly writing to a drive that doesn't need it.
But you are tripling the potential fail factor. Drive 1 + Drive 2 + RAID controller software.
 
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Archgaull

Archgaull

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I probably should have clarified better, my OS would NOT be on this drive. As it stands, I currently have 2 drives: My C drive, which is a 240GB SSD with my OS on it, and my M drive, a 1TB HDD with nothing but games/movies/music/books on it.

If I were to RAID, it would be between a new WD Caviar Blue, and my current WD Caviar Blue for a combined M drive.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Well, that's a little different.
Still, I probably wouldn't. M drive for Movies/Music, G drive for Games.
 
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