Personnally since I have RAID there is no going back.
My storage RAID5 is :
- 1 Seagate PATA 300G (replaced a dead Maxtor)
- 1 Maxtor PATA 250G
- 3 Seagate SATA 250G
And my OS RAID1 is :
- 1 Seagate 160G PATA
- 1 Seagate 250G SATA
In the first two weeks after install, I went through two Maxtors which both died of the Maxtor+nforce syndrome (SATA Maxtors on nforce chipsets work for a week then randomly fail).
Since then (2 years) the oldest drive which was a Maxtor 250G PATA died of old age ; and one of the drives in the RAID1 failed (an IBM deskstar).
I lost no data. When the OS drive failed it booted from the mirror without a hitch. No reinstall. I just got a system message from the OS telling me "go buy another drive". Buy drive, plug it, add to array, it rebuilds itself. That's how I like it.
Anyway.
If you have important files (everyone does) you need RAID1. With 250GB hard disks at 60 euro the cost is lower than your time bothering to install all the crap again when your neat fast RAID0 burns.
I still have backups on USB hard disks. RAID protects against HDD death but not against my stupidity (deleting files), or computer theft, power supplies catching fire, etc.
So.
Decide how much storage you need for :
- important files => RAID1
- the rest (ie. your legally downloaded divx'es he heh)
Place the OS and everything important on a RAID1 array built from two drives. All the rest goes on separate hard drives, maybe even USB.
Note also that RAID1 is faster than RAID0 for mostly-read accesses since, IF the controller is smart, it can distribute reads evenly on both disks. So, RAID0 would only make sense for scratch space and when you need the ultimate in megabytes/second (like, if you do a lot of audio/video edits). Or, if your controller is not smart.
Unless you're like me with thousands of RAW files from a digital camera and all my CDs ripped losslessly to harddisk, you don't need RAID5...