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    Raid 0 or Raid 1 ?

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by balinor17, Mar 8, 2011.

  1. balinor17

    balinor17 Notebook Enthusiast

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    which is one better. I thinking of getting the 2x 360gb or the one 750 gb ,just want to know from you guys which one is better.
     
    balinor17, Mar 8, 2011
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  2. DaneGRClose

    DaneGRClose Notebook Virtuoso

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    Raid 0 is better for speed but if you don't do regular backups or keep all your important data on an external hdd or server you may end up being screwed if one of your drives has an issue. Raid 1 is better for backup as it just duplicates the 1st hdd to the 2nd so if one goes out you still have the 2nd drive with the exact same data on it.
     
    DaneGRClose, Mar 8, 2011
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  3. VoiceInTheWilderness

    VoiceInTheWilderness Notebook Consultant

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    To further what Danger is saying, RAID 1 is for data redundancy (it "mirrors" the data across all drives in the set), whereas RAID 0 merges two (or more, in theory) drives together, giving you one large apparent drive. RAID 0 is usually faster than RAID 1, though sometimes not by much. It depends on what you do with it.

    RAID 0 divides the mean-time-between failures for your drive set by the number of drives in it, so for a two-disk RAID 0 setup, you are statistically reducing your expected drive system lifetime to half of what a single drive would be, but there again, modern equipment is very good, so that failure time might still be very far in the future. RAID 1 can only lose your data if all drives fail. Otherwise, you can still get your data off the system because the whole set is only bad when all are bad.
     
    VoiceInTheWilderness, Mar 8, 2011
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  4. balinor17

    balinor17 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I was wondering if I get a single drive now ,could I install a second drive later and would it be two separate drives (raid 1) or would they become (raid 0).Thanks for your input.
     
    balinor17, Mar 8, 2011
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  5. Photolysis

    Photolysis Notebook Consultant

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    If you go with a single drive to start with before adding another one, you'd have to reformat it before you could use it as part of a RAID setup, which would mean losing any data you didn't backup or move. If you don't format it, you simply end up with 2 regular hard drives.

    When you create a new RAID, you should get the option to choose RAID1 or RAID0.
     
    Photolysis, Mar 8, 2011
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  6. BlazeGaj

    BlazeGaj Notebook Evangelist

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    If you back up all your important stuff in an exteranl hard drive then raid 0 is better.

    I still prefer no raids.
     
    BlazeGaj, Mar 8, 2011
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  7. The_Shirt

    The_Shirt Notebook Evangelist

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    So does RAID 0 mean two 500g drives show as 1t, or thereabouts? I realize it's actually a little less...
     
    The_Shirt, Mar 8, 2011
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  8. DemolitionManHD

    DemolitionManHD Notebook Consultant

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    Yes, when raid0 is select it will combin both HDs as one large disk, you can partition it in to two or more partitions, it will improve speed over raid 1.
     
    DemolitionManHD, Mar 8, 2011
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