Two 160GB in RAID, need help please

[EquineHero]

I have a 240GB SanDisk SSD as my primary drive. I have a secondary 500GB drive I use for gaming storage, it's 7200RPM and it is SATA III. I have a third drive that's 160GB that I use primarily for storing game recording footage until after I render the final movie. I have a second 160GB drive that I want to use with the first one in RAID but I want to leave the other two drives (240 and 500) alone. I can use Dell's RAID utility but I know almost nothing about running drives in RAID.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

There are different kinds of raid. What do you want the drive to do? Are you going for speed? You'd want RAID 0 for that...

Here is a good link to learning a bit about Raid.

https://www.prepressure.com/library/technology/raid

I run my 240 gig Sandisk SSDs in RAID 0 and the only thing that sucks is the boot times because of all the configuration crap when I first power on.

 

[EquineHero]

There are different kinds of raid. What do you want the drive to do? Are you going for speed? You'd want RAID 0 for that...

Here is a good link to learning a bit about Raid.

https://www.prepressure.com/library/technology/raid

I run my 240 gig Sandisk SSDs in RAID 0 and the only thing that sucks is the boot times because of all the configuration crap when I first power on.

I've only got one SSD. Will these 160s in RAID0 be faster than an SSD?

 

[Th3pwn3r]

Wait, the 160 gig drives are hard drives? There's no chance they'll be faster than an SSD even in raid.

 

[EquineHero]

Wait, the 160 gig drives are hard drives? There's no chance they'll be faster than an SSD even in raid.

Okay, that's cool. It'll be faster than just one of them though, right?

 

[Th3pwn3r]

Yep, but keep in mind that when you run a RAID 0 you're basically going from 320 gigs of storage to 160 because the data is duplicated across the two drives.

 

[reedo_43]

That is incorrect, that would be raid1 mirroring. You will have all the space. However you do double the risk of failure. I1 of the drives fail, you loose all of the data on both drives.

 

[EquineHero]

Both drives have very good SMART data. So running two 160GB drives in RAID0 is 320GB of fast?

 

[reedo_43]

Faster than a single 160...

 

[EquineHero]

Faster than a single 160...

Now I'm confused. Will two 160GB drives in RAID0 show up in Windows as a single 320GB drive?

 

[reedo_43]

Yes

 

[EquineHero]

Thanks

 

[EquineHero]

Woo! Thanks you guys, I don't know who's better at helping right now, Tom's HW or Linus Tech Tips.