To raid 0 or not to raid 0?

[Guest]

I was just gonna get a 2TB WD black but wondering would it be faster if i got 2 1TB WD blacks and put them in raid 0? I'm wondering if this will make it faster and i mean a lot faster... using these for games, music, movies and TV shows. Also do i need a raid card to do this?

 

[mauller07]

2 1tb driver in raid 0 will be faster than 1 2tb drive, but 2 2tb drives in raid 0 will be faster than 2 1tb in raid 0.

your motherboard's build in raid should suit all your needs perfectly fine.

 

[cin19]

The black one is not designed for the RAID, if you want and buy the Western Digital Red one.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/nas/

 

[Onus]

Games, music, movies, and TV shows do not need the speed benefit of RAID0. For my part, I don't think it is worth the increased risk of data loss. My systems use a SSD system drive (much faster than a RAID0 of two mechanical drives.) and a RAID1 pair for data.

 

[popatim]

you want faster then get a small ssd boot disk. Raid 0 primarily does large file transfers very welll (sequential reads and writes)

 

[Guest]

i will be getting an SSD for boot/OS and the 2 1TB is the same price as 1 2TB(staying withen budget) so i was wondering would it be worth it to raid 0 two 1TB? Also how much of a risk is it being in raid like does that shorten the life span of the HDD's? (lose of data is no big deal although re installing everything is a pain) but will this not only lose my data but kill my HDD's? i would love to put everything on an SSD but dont have the money for the amount of space i need and yes i will use up 2TB with the amout of games, movies, music and TV shows i have...

 

[popatim]

I have two seagate 320gb drives that have to be 10yrs old and have run raid0 their whole lives. Yes I still have them installed. Its all about the drives quality. you could get lucky like I did or not. Go ahead and give raid0 a try. generally if the drive lasts a month they will last a few years. Worse come to worse and they don't raid well you can use windows to span them and still get one 2tb drive.

Just remember you still need to do backups no matter which way you roll.