RAID info....

[jcarle]

RAID0 isn't designed for storing critical data. It's sole purpose is space and speed. If you have large amounts of unimportant data and don't want to or can't split it up across partitions then RAID0 is definitely for you.

and i do have critical data. i dont see how people can buy 2x250gig hdds and raid0 them. there is no way that you have 500gigs of unimportant data..

You don't seem to get the point. You don't raid 0 for data storage. If you're using raid 0 for data storage, then you should be shot. Raid 0 is for speed, and it does make a difference. I have 2x74GB Raptors in Raid 0 for my OS and 2x250GB in Raid 1 for my data storage. I couldn't give a rat what happened to the data on my Raid 0 volume if it crashed and that's the way it should be.

[ripken204]

no that is my point. many people only have raid0 and no backup drive. i know raid0 is not for storage. but ppl get large hdds and raid0 them, i dont get why, especially when its only meant for gaming.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Have you tried it? Benchmarks will not show you what you can "feel". I don't know why people put so much stock in benchmark numbers. Yes, they're good for getting a baseline idea of how something performs, but they're never going to give you a true picture of real-world performance. I can tell you from experience that I can feel the difference in a single drive based system and a two drive RAID0 based system.

I occassionaly play Urban Terror (a Quake III mod if you're not in the know). If you don't think it helps load times then explain to me how I'm the first one to have a new map loaded every time it rotates.

I'm with jcarle...my OS is on a RAID0 array because I don't care about the data on it. I can reinstall and repatch the OS, applications and games. I have the secondary RAID0 array for working with music files, videos, temporary download storage, etc, etc. While I do "store" a lot on the secondary array, none of it is critical data. I'm one of the lucky few that has a seperate machine specifically for storing my critical data.

[Zxian]

no that is my point. many people only have raid0 and no backup drive. i know raid0 is not for storage. but ppl get large hdds and raid0 them, i dont get why, especially when its only meant for gaming.

You keep referring to RAID0 as something that's meant "for gaming". It's not. It's meant to increase the effective read/write speeds to your hard drives. The fact that games benefit from that is secondary.

I'm currently in the process of ripping my 100 or so DVDs to XviD. What I'll typically do on any given day is rip the raw DVD to disk using DVDShrink and then queue up the DVDs in AutoGK. Those raw DVDs take up a lot of space, and since most of the DVD ripping (not the encoding) is limited by the transfer speed of the DVD drive and the hard drive, it would help if I had RAID0. On the other hand, all those DVDs take up a bit of space (5-8GB each) so storing them all on a single disk takes up a lot of space. The encoded videos (1.4GB) go on my 500GB RAID1 drives.

With RAID0, it would be win-win.