HDD in RAID0 Or SSD ???

[afw]

I have 0 exp when it comes to RAID ... so kinda hesitent to do it ... first of all i'd like to know what sort of raid can I setup with my MOBO (s/w RAID or h/w RAID) ... My MOBO come with a built-in RAID controller i guess .. so is it h/w RAID ???

I am currently thinking of these 2 options ... and am willing to spend $150 max ...

* SSD 64GB ($115 after MIR) - Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BD/64GB 2.5" Des...

or

* 2 x HDD 640GB in RAID0 ($120) - Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200...

so here's what I like to know ...
1) which setup will be faster ... ??
2) what are the issues of raid 0 ??
3) Im kinda hesitent to do RAID0 with 2 640GB HDDs ... cos if 1 fails ... I will lose 1.2TB worth DATA ... ... what should i do
4) Is there a better option than the 2 I have mentioned here ... (like minimizing the data loss if one drive fails by going 320GB x 2 in RAID etc... )

Thanx in advance guys... appreciate your help a lot ...

 

[Thrackan]

I have 0 exp when it comes to RAID ... so kinda hesitent to do it ... first of all i'd like to know what sort of raid can I setup with my MOBO (s/w RAID or h/w RAID) ... My MOBO come with a built-in RAID controller i guess .. so is it h/w RAID ???

I am currently thinking of these 2 options ... and am willing to spend $150 max ...

* SSD 64GB ($115 after MIR) - Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BD/64GB 2.5" Des...

or

* 2 x HDD 640GB in RAID0 ($120) - Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200...

so here's what I like to know ...
1) which setup will be faster ... ??
2) what are the issues of raid 0 ??
3) Im kinda hesitent to do RAID0 with 2 640GB HDDs ... cos if 1 fails ... I will lose 1.2TB worth DATA ... ... what should i do
4) Is there a better option than the 2 I have mentioned here ... (like minimizing the data loss if one drive fails by going 320GB x 2 in RAID etc... )

Thanx in advance guys... appreciate your help a lot ...

1) reaction speed: SSD. Pure throughput might be won by the RAID set
2) well it's not mirrored, and moving from one RAID controller to another might be difficult
3) Get a backup drive.
4) not rly

 

[afw]

Any other opinions/suggestions ... pls ...

 

[t_ski]

Your answer to 3 & 4 is a raid 5 array. Buy four 320GB drives and one of them acts as parity. If you lose one drive, the data is safe, and you can rebuild the array. Your motherboard must support it or you would need to buy a raid card.

 

[afw]

cant go raid5 with $150

 

[timta2]

Before you buy ANY WD Black drives make sure you read the comments about Raid. It seems that WD has disabled TLER on most of these drives now, trying to get you to buy RE drives. You can search the comments on Newegg with "RAID".

You could get two drives now and run them RAID 1 (Mirror) until you can afford more drives. That's what I did.

 

[afw]

Thanx for the tip .. i'll check the user reviews ...

And abt RAID1 .... IIRC Raid1 does not improve performance .... its used for Data redundancy so data can be retrieved if one disk fails ... correct me if im wrong ....

 

[t_ski]

cant go raid5 with $150

You can buy three of these @ $50 each:

Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB 7200...

That still gets you a raid 5 array (two disks for data and one for parity).

And abt RAID1 .... IIRC Raid1 does not improve performance .... its used for Data redundancy so data can be retrieved if one disk fails ... correct me if im wrong ....

Raid stands for "redundant array of individual (or inexpensive) disks. Redundancy is the whole point of raid, and raid 0 (striping) is not true raid because it's not redundant. If you are worried at all about data loss, you have to go with a raid 1 or 5 array (unless you have an add-in board for more advanced solutions, but we are talking about built-in controllers on the motherboard here). The benefit of raid 5 is two-fold: 1) it is like a combination of mirroring (raid 1) and striping (raid 0) in that you get greater performance and data security, and 2) if you were to lose a drive, a rebuild of the array would be faster than a raid 1 array because you are only replacing a portion of the data (equal to one over the number of drives in the array minus one*) instead of the entire data set in a raid 1 array.


*examples:

3 drives minus one equals 2, so 1 over 2 or one half
4 drives minus one equals 3, so 1 over 3 or one third
5 drives minus one equals 4, so 1 over 4 or one fourth
6 drives minus one equals 5, so 1 over 5 or one fifth
etc...

 

[DOM]

i would just get one of these

Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, L...

i have 2 Seagate in RAID 0 and realy dont notice a difference from when i had one