How likely is it for HDD to crash in RAID 0

[JizZ]

Im planning to set my system up with two Maxtor 80GB 8mb SATA drives running in RAID 0, but everywhere I read I see people talking about how risky it is when you can lose your data if one HDD fails.

What I would like to know is how likely is that to happen? I mean, does one drive have to physically stop working in order to lose the data, or can it happen with something as simple as a power blackout or not shutting down properly? I'll mainly be using the system for gaming so wont really have anything important anyway, I just dont want to have to re-install my system twice a month.

Thanks

 

[smitbret]

A HDD is no more likely to crash in a RAID 0 setup than when it's used as a single drive. The problem is that there are two drives that could fail instead of one. If you lose one drive, you lose all of the data on both drives. I've been using RAID 0 setups for about 2 1/2 years and never had a drive fail, yet. They're fine for most uses, but if you have absolutley critical data that you can't afford to lose, make a back-up (something you should be doing anyway).
-Brett

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Looking at it from PURELY a statistical point the probability is 2x the chance of one plus the chance of both at the same time... But when the math is done it comes out as being pretty close to 2 times the risk of one drive dying.

In reality though there are ltos of other factors. If you do regular backups of critical data you should be ok.
If you want the raid array for critical data though it might be better doing a RAID1, RAID0+1 or a RAID5 for data security.

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[siranthony]

I have been lucky enough to not have a hard drive die on me. Usually you can tell when they are starting to act up. They get noisier or data errors happen. A drive could just take a dump all of a sudden but so far so good. I usually don't keep a hard drive long enough for it to get old and die. A year and a half to two years and it will be time to upgrade anyway. Use you old hard drive to back up anything important. Even if it is twice as likly to happen with two drives. It's still not that likly to happen. If you have really important data then use raid 1 like someone already said.

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[KingMdM]

The solution is simple really, and actually 2 80 giggers may be too much to run Raid 0. RAID 0 is used ONLY for perfomance, so you would want to install stuff on the Raid 0 where performance is desired - such as the Operating System, Swap Files, Intense Applications such as games, etc... Ideally you would have at LEAST 3 drives, 2 for a RAID 0 setup and 1 HUGE left over drive to store your critical files such as Documents, MP3's, pictures, backups, DVD Movies, etc...

Personally I think running a 40-80gig RAID would be more than enough(your 160G Raid seems over kill to me) with the 3rd drive for critical files. Yes, there is twice the chance of Disk Failure running Raid 0, so you wouldnt want to put anything on a RAID 0 that cant be reinstalled/replaced at a whim.

I dream of running 2 of those super fast Serial drives by WD - the 36G S-ATA drives running at 10,000RPM in a RAID 0 and getting 1 large 160+G ATA-100 drive to compliment it Heck keep in mind you can run 3,4,5+ drives in a Raid 0 setup, with each additional drive giving you even faster/better performance - for example a Raid 0 with 4 drives would run almost 4x the speed of 1 drive, of course each drive needs to run on its own channel/cable to see this performance boost The idea is easy to see since each drive in a RAID is being written to evenly at the SAME TIME(given the drive is on its own cable/channel), and of course Windows treats the Raid 0 dirves as 1 logical drive.