Raid 0? or Raid 1? That is the question!

[grandmastermark]

I purchased a Systemax Beast IV last feb and have already suffered 2 hd (Hitachi) failures. Luckily both were fully backed up to my external hd. It costs me about $80 each time to send the system in for warranty repair. I have ordered two WD Caviar Black 640 gig drives and I am setting up a raid array. Which is better / faster for me? Raid 0? Raid 1?

My system looks like this:
Vista premium 64
AMD Phenom Quad Core 9550 2.2 GHz
Asus m3a78-emh hdmi mATX motherboard
8gb DDR2 800Mhz PC6400 - 2GB x 4
Sata 20x DVD
Fantom 1TB eSata external HD

I am a noob at this. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[huron]

Faster - RAID 0.

RAID 1 is mirrored (copies to both drives).

RAID 0 offers no redundancy, so if one drive fails, so does the whole array.

 

[grandmastermark]

Thank you. I understand that part and if I go raid 0 I am thinking that I could use the Fantom drive to back up the enitre system. I think?

Is one faster than the other?

 

[huron]

RAID 0 is faster because it stripes to both the drives, but provides no redundancy.

If you do this, you probably should make sure you backup often, or have another drive for non-OS files to be safe.