Understanding Raid

R

rydin4life

New Member
Ok, so tell me if I have this right.

Raid 0 is just like having two hard drives with separate information. This way I could have a C drive with OS and programs and a D drive for just documents. I would still need an external or other option for backup.

Raid 1 would involved having 2 hds, but they would hold the same identical ifnormation.

So if I want to have two discs (1 for OS and programs and 1 for documents) and use an external hd for backup, Raid 0 is the way to go. Alternatively, I could have a raid 1 with 3 hds (C drive with D drive mirroring and then and E drive with documents).

Is that correct....or am I way off. Right now I have a C drive with programs/OS and a D with all my documents/videos/music..etc. and I backup to an external hd....and I'm just trying to see what would mimic that the best.
 
RAID 0 basically "combines" two identical drives to appear as one, so if you had two 500GB hard drives in RAID 0 it would appear to the OS as a single 1TB hard drive.

RAID 1 also appears as a single hard drive, however if you had two 500GB hard drives in RAID 1 you would only see a single 500GB HD in the OS. The difference being all data is copied to both drives, so if one fails you still have another. However I wouldn't consider it a backup solution as if you delete a file it gets erased from both drives, it really only helps if a drive has a mechanical failure.
 
gotcha...so if I have two hd's in a raid0, there isn't really a way to separate what I want on one from the other?

Can I just get two hds without having them setup in raid on SATA II then?...similar to the way my xp box is now.
 
rydin4life said:
gotcha...so if I have two hd's in a raid0, there isn't really a way to separate what I want on one from the other?

Can I just get two hds without having them setup in raid on SATA II then?...similar to the way my xp box is now.
Click to expand...

yeah of course you can
 
rydin4life said:
gotcha...so if I have two hd's in a raid0, there isn't really a way to separate what I want on one from the other?

Can I just get two hds without having them setup in raid on SATA II then?...similar to the way my xp box is now.
Click to expand...
Yes you can have setup without RAID, I was going to ask why you wanted RAID in the first place.

Also though you can setup two HD's in RAID 0 and create two partitions.
 
[-0MEGA-];1107826 said:
Also though you can setup two HD's in RAID 0 and create two partitions.
Click to expand...

seems kind of pointless then in that sense? If I want to separate areas, I would just use two separate drives, correct?

thanks for all the help by the way.
 
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