RAID question

[thebeen]

sorry if this is a double post of any sort.
I am in the process of buying a new computer (probably an alienware or I am going to build it myself) and I was wondering what are the pro's and con's of RAIDing the HardDrives. Thanks!!

 

[Zlash]

What kind of RAID? =)

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[unoc]

R.A.I.D. means "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk" and has been used in the past to identify the disk array of server which used to store data on several disk unit having more then one unit with the same data in order to be able to recover lost data by reload the same data from an other unit still functioning. A controller will reload the corrupted data by reading it from an other disk. More disks are installed and more the reliability is. Such configuration is called RAID 1. Normally only one disk is used to "mirror" the main disk and you may build a RAID 1 configuration with only two disks. The total capacity seen by the OS is the capacity of the smaller disk of the two (or more) units. The reliability increases.
If you connect the two disks in parallel (RAID 0, also called stripe) you may also write each data shared between the two disks. When the system will read the data, the time it takes is about half of the time that needs to load the data from a single disk because it reads simultaneously from two (or more) unit only half amount of data. In this way the performances of the disk array are almost double of that of a single disk, but the reliability is about half of that you have by using a single disk because if only one disk dies, you will loose the half of each data and consequently you will lose all data.
Other configuration of the RAID array may be: 0+1, 5, JBOD.

The standard RAID controller that is possible to find on modern motherboard will only allow to build a RAID 0, 1, 0+1 configuration only, while RAID 5 and JBOD are reserved to expensive controller for server. In the past, RAID configuration were only made by using SCSI controller, now it is possible to realise cheap RAID array also using IDE hdd.
To calculate the capacity of a RAID 0 (stripe array) you must multiply the capacity of the smaller hdd time the number of hard drive (i.e. 4 hdd, 50Gb the first, 40 GB the second, 60 GB the third, 50 the fourth the total size of the array is 4x40 GB equal to 160 GB.


the last is in the past

 

[camieabz]

RAID 0 - combines the capacity & cache of two. Makes for better performance, but loss of one drive loses all data.

RAID 1 - One drive mirrors the other. Slightly less performance. Maximum data security.

RAID 0/1 - Combination of the two. Needs 4 drives.

I suggest you run a couple of search engines for other methods of RAID. The ones above are the types which tend to come supported on mobos with onboard RAID.

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