what is RAID 0?

If you have to ask, you're better off not knowing what it is or using it.

First, i read on wiki and i dont understand. Then i read the front few pages and i cant find the answer. Then i read few pages back and i dont find any answers too. What i know is just about combining 2 physical harddisk to form a new virtual hdd with better speed?

So i ask it here and hope somebody could enlightens about it. I dont have time to read through all the pages too. I stored a lot of medias, so i guess this RAID thing can help me in term of file transfering?

if you store a lot of medias, i think it's better not to use RAID instead, coz if anyhow one of the disk fails, all your media will go down the drain.
that is if you're running RAID striping* (i think ) on your hard disks.

RAID explained.

Well, first let's start with RAID 0, or data striping. What it does is it distributes the data that you write to it, or read from it, over two separate HDDs effectively boosting both read and write speeds. Take for example you are writing a 100MB file to your HDD. With a RAID 0 configuration, your system will write 50MB to one HDD and the other 50MB to the second HDD. The one problem with this is data security. Should one disk fail, you will lose all your data.

RAID 1 is for redundancy and is also called data mirroring. Unlike RAID 0, it offers no performance boosts. What it does instead is it will write the theoretical 100MB file I mentioned above to both your HDDs. This means that even if there is a failure of a single HDD, you still have a perfect back-up in the form of your second, mirrored drive.

RAID 10, or 1+0, does what its name suggests. It will first mirror data, then stripe it to two HDDs. Mind you this requires a grand total of four HDDs but affords you the performance of a RAID 0 configuration and the redundancy of RAID 1.

RAID 0+1 or RAID 01 practically does the same thing, with it striping data before mirroring, as the name suggests.

RAID 5 and 6 are called data striping with parity and frankly they are quite complicated to understand. But the performance you can gain here is minimal as compared to the aforementioned four other RAID arrays. One thing they do offer above all else is good read speeds, lousy writes and somewhat decent redundancy.

Oh.

As dlwl and Loki[D.d.G] explained, you still don't want to use RAID-0.

The other RAID types in a nutshell, "throw money at the problem of data integrity." The higher up the number you go, the more money needed for that little extra data integrity. As a general side benefit, you get a little performance boost on read, but slower on write. Other cons include more electricity is spent on powering the extra drives, more heat is generated and more space is consumed.

If you just want to simply increase storage capacity, don't bother with RAID. If you like a little extra security in case of a hard disk failure, RAID-1 is a good starting point but you'll need to spend 2x the price for any storage capacity.

I think Seagate is a better harddisk manufacturer...
My Western Digital failed me...
Now I am using 320GB Seagate Baraccuda and 1TB external Seagate..

You are judging a company that caters to millions worldwide on a single malfunction? Magnificent deduction.

But I do agree that personal experience does tend to shape the way we view the world. For example, I've been using a Samsung 80GB HDD for close to five years now. Not bad eh?

Yup, if it wasn't Seagate changes to 3 years warranty for most of its product, I will not get WD at all. Hi, is Samsung 1.5TB cheaper now? thanks.

I bought a Maxtor Basics 1TB in a haste because the shop near my house did not have WD MyBook and I wasn't willing to go LYP or order by post.

Now I'm beginning to worry that this HDD will fail me. I was never too interested in HDD as I had always an external one to backup my files to. It always has been either Samsung, Hitachi or Toshiba. I've heart something about Maxtor/Seagate being extremely prone to failure. Is that still true?

i got 2 TB maxtor - 1Tb each...usin it almost a year as a backup + media storage for my mkvs....seems gud until now..

rm330 at lyp now.

Why extreme pc gaming user they got 2 hardisk. 1 primary is using SSD and 2 secondary using HDD. Izzit SSD they using for installing window and game which give the loading time for faster?

Yes. But those are usually people with cash to burn, literally.

Raid 0 is never good. It only takes 1 HDD to fail and all your data is gone. If you are having 3TB HDD Raid 0 and your HDD fails, how on earth are you going to transfer all your data out? No way unless 10 TB HDD is out in the market.

my wd raptor died today..jeeezzzz..using halfway and clicking noise and just cant be detect anymore

cant afford another raptor anymore..samsung f3 a good replacement?

WD Black Caviar is the best

i bought a caviar black, manufacture date NOV 09, but warranty til 2012 =.=

how is that possible? the seller haven't get back to me yet

U need to go back to the shop that u bought your hdd or u direct contact WD and ask them

The Samsung F3 1TB would be a good option seeing as it uses two 500GB platters and affords extremely good sequential read/write performances. On par with the Raptor and faster as well as cooler than the WD Caviar Black. The only difference is seek times in which both WD HDDs have the edge.