raid 0 is iit worth my 2nd hard drive

i have two hitachi 200 gb. they total 400 gb. my question is how much of a performance increase is it. i really dont want to sacafice my 2nd hard drive

 

It's really hard to answer because it also depends on what chipset you are using and what task you are doing. You won't find any significant better of CPU utilization, accessing time or any regular work. However, if you do read/write intensively, you will find a big difference--up to 200% in some cases.

By the way, using RAID 0 doesn't mean you have to sacrifice the 2nd hard drive since you will have total capacity = (1st hdd + 2nd hdd), nothing lost. You just will not be able to use them separately ever again without losing data.

You may search for reviews about RAID, you may get more idea. For example, RAID performance comparison@thetechreport

 

Raid will give you about 185% the speed of a single drive. access times increase with raid, but the overall results will be much better. loading times for programs is much less on a raid array. I have raid in my U709, and I love it.

K-TRON

 

how do i turn on raid

edit: which raid is right for me i have 2 hard drives and i don really care about backup. i just want pure performance but not with a risk of data loss.
i have external hard drive so i cann back up to 110 gb

 

>> You have only 2 choices:
1. RAID 0: Stripped --- you will gain a performance on this one
2. RAID 1: Mirror -- using 2nd hdd for backup

 

go for raid one if you want performance

 

Raid 0 is for performance, raid 1 is for data security. in raid 0, you will have 400Gb of storage, and in raid 1 you will have 200 gb.
Raid 0 only fails when one of the drives fail to start.
You have to have a raid manager in the bios to support raid. If your bios does not, than it is just spanning. Two separate drives.

K-TRON

 

I would personally not recommend you use RAID0, especially if you have sensitive data on your HD and cannot afford a reliable hardware RAID controller. Software RAID controllers are too dodgy, and chances are you will lose all your data in a year or so.

Most firms use RAID for data integrity purposes. Nested RAID requires more disks but is much more reliable.

 

what are the chances of a hard drive failing in raid0

 

it is not the raid which causes your harddrive to fail, it is the physical drive themselves. I have been using raid 0 in my notebook for almost a year, and I have had zero problems. Problems only arise if one of the harddrives fail. When that happens you loose everything, since half of the data is on each of the drives.

K-TRON

 

i dont see raid in my bios but i have it in device manager how do i start it up or turn it on

 

Your laptop may not support raid, your harddrives are in spanning mode right now. Each drive is separate.
If your system supports raid, you would know if it did. After the bios boots. a raid manager opens, and scans the array, it usually takes about 5-10 seconds. Once the array is checked, than the operating system starts to load.
I know on my Voodoo, you have to hit tab to enter the raid manager.
If you do not get a raid window, as I mentioned then your laptop does not support raid. You can only keep your harddrives in spanning mode.

K-TRON