How Safe is Raid 0?

Im looking to get a 200gb raid 0 configuration in my new laptop from alienware, but im not sure how safe and reliable this set-up is. I have only had experience with single drive pc's. I keep alot of important data on the hard drive, so i can't loose it if the raid 0 fails. Has anyone had a problem with raid 0? Has it ever failed on anyone? Is there a life time on the reliability of the hard drive configuaration?

 

It's not. RAID-0 doubles the chance of losing data, because if one drive fails, you lose the data on both drives (but you get double the storage space of a single drive). But it's faster. RAID-1 is what you want, which puts the same data on both drives, so if one dies, you still have the other one (but you only get the storage space of a single drive, rather than both of them added together).

 

QFT.

With the growing sizes of HDD, it's becoming harder and harder to back them up on media (such as dvd/cd). I've used RAID-0, I never will again. Loosing 250GB-500GB worth of data... not worth the speed increae.

either use RAID1, RAID1+0, RAID 5, or RAID 0 and a hefty HDD for backups (and do it frequently). IMHO, go for RAID 1+0 or 5 if you have the money and feel like you could set that. Otherwise, try raid 1.

 

you said your laptop has 2 drives. so you can do raid 1 or raid 0 and non of the others because they need 3 or more drives.
If you want to use the notebook mainly for gaming and can risk losing the data then go for it. If you use Vista then try using ready boost it also speeds up loading times.

 

raid 0 is just as reliable as 2 single drives, you are in essence making the two drives into a single drive
edit:your data is just as safe as if you did not have a raid array.

I have used raid 0 before and loved it, but like was said above back up your data(just as you should with a single drive)

 

RAID 0 doubles your chance of data loss because you have to worry about two drives dying.

It's good for performance though. If you care about your data RAID 1 is always your best bet. Even if a drive dies you still have another with a COMPLETE set of your data on it.

RAID 5 is a good compromise, but you can't really do this on a laptop. Also, if a RAID 5 drive dies, rebuilding the array isn't guaranteed.

 

RAID 0 is just as safe as having two single drives, which is very safe.

 

In raid 0 if one drive fails you lose all the data from both drives.

Also there is an additional chance that the raid gets distroyed. For example if your mainboard breaks then without raid the hard disk can still be read. With Raid 0 if the mainboard (the raid controller which is on the mainboard) breaks then the data on the raid is gone. Bios upgrades can also distroy raids in some cases because it can reset the raid controler.

Raid 0 has alot more potential to break and cause data lose but chances are still not high.

 

to recap everyone:

raid 0
faster, less reliable. made for pure speed but nothing else.

IMO, speed is good. i have had about 4-6 raid 0 setups in the past year or so, and havent lost any data..not once. for people who say drives fail often, i have only had one drive fail on me, and that drive was 9ish years old.

for a laptop though, im not sure how the travelling bumps and bruises effect the hard drives all that much, so i wouldnt be all that willing to have raid 0 on a laptop.

im sure a laptop hard drive has a higher chance to fail then a desktop hard drive, simply due to mobility, bumps..etc...

 

Not quite. If one of two single drives die, you lose half your data. If one of the two drives in raid 0 dies, you lose all your data.
There's also the question of data corruption. The two drives have to be kept synced. I'd imagine that in case of power loss or similar, you'd have *much* higher chance of data loss, because the two drives might then be out of sync. Probably will only cause a few sectors to be lost, but it's still trickier than with two single drives. Or if the raid controller hiccups, you have problems.

Also about performance, RAID 1 lowers your seek time a fair bit, unlike RAID 0 which makes it *worse*.
So the performance question depends on how you use the drive. RAID 0 is only good for sustained transfers of large amounts of sequential data, which is a somewhat uncommon scenario. It happens, but in general, don't assume RAID 0 is faster in general. Only use it if you know you use your disks in cases where the inferior seek time doesn't matter, and where you need the extra transfer bandwidth.

Otherwise you're better off with a single drive or RAID 1.

 

^ yeah, what he said

 

I am sure you get the idea by now.

There are two reasons why I definitely would not recommend RAID 0 for you.

1) The fact that you made a post about the reliability of RAID 0.
2) The fact that you have important data. If you data is that important, consider RAID 1, or no RAID at all.