RAID 1 vs RAID 0

[Vindictus]

I'm building my first PC, and it's going to be a beauty when I'm finished.

I'm using the ASUS PW5 DH motherboard, and I've ordered two 150g WD Raptor hard drives.

I'm debating on the best setup for these drives.

I keep hearing about how great RAID 0 is, and no one seems to be considering RAID 1. Is this just because RAID 0 provides you with better storage capacity?

My options are, RAID 1 the two drives, RAID 0 the drives, or keep them separate.

I'm feeling partial to the RAID 1 concept at the moment, for several reasons. Backup redundancy sounds very nice, improved read performance as well (which is the overall goal). I don't mind losing some storage capacity as I probably won't fill up one 150g hard drive. I also think the ASUS PW5 DH mobo supports RAID 1 out of the box, which is nice.

Would it be faster to simply use them as two separate drives and install the OS on the D: drive, putting all my programs on the C: drive?

I'm fairly new to the RAID in general, I understand the basics, but I'm still not sure which setup will give me the best performance/reliability.

Thoughts?

 

[PCcashCow]

Raid 1 does carry a lot of overhead and as you stated, you will basically lose 150gb. The Raptor (depending on which one) the large cache in a mirrored set is much faster than standard Sata drives in a raid 1. But the real gain is in the raid 0 because striping.

You can approach it two ways: By speed or by safety. But some say taking the safe route isn't always great because mobo's seem to drop like flys these days. No matter what you do not everyone will be pleased. You could always just go balls out with raid 0, then implement some type of external protection via Veritas\Ghost\Nas.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

RAID 1 gives you full protection from a single hard drive failure, with somewhat improved read performance and slightly lower write performance when compared to a single drive. The array size is equal to the size of one of the drives in the array.

RAID 0 offers no redundancy at all. In fact, the reliability of a 2-drive RAID 0 array as a whole is 1/2 the reliability of a single drive. Read and write performance is up to twice that of a single drive. The array size is equal to the sum of the drives.

RAID 0 is actually an incorrect label, the array is not redundant at all. All other levels of RAID are redundant, but remember that they only protect you against a drive failure. They do not protect against OS errors, corrupted data or files, spyware/adware/viruses, security breaches, etc. RAID is not a substitute for backup of critical data.

 

[WilliamT]

If you think you'll never fill up the 150GB drive, then go with RAID 1. I use a RAID 1 configuration for my financial data and I don't notice the performance penalty at all.

I'm thinking about running my entire OS on a RAID 1 configuration. The time it takes to patch up and OS and install GBs of software takes forever.