If I have two drives in a Raid 0 striped configuration, then this would mean that data transfer would be almost twice as fast. But, seeks would be the same speed as with a single drive.

If I have to separate drives and install say apps on one and OS on the other, seeks would be reduced since the heads don't have to move between where the OS is and where the app is on the drive all the time. So this may mean that Raid 0 isn't necessarily quicker in normal desktop use.

Anyone found this to be the case?

I think you might be a bit confused, unless you've worded things wrong.

How could you install OS on one and apps on the other? It's a logical drive over multiple disks, you can't pick and choose where you store things. Plus, everything has to go down the same bus.

You have it right. If you scrap Raid-0 and just use it as two separate drives, it'll be "quicker".

RAID 0 is also a way of making all your data vulnerable if there's a failure in any one of the physical drives. I wouldn't use it.

^^^^^^ what Johnners said.

One hard drive fault, and everything is b*ggered. I wouldn't touch RAID 0 with a barge pole.

What I do:

1 smallish fast drive – OS/apps
2.Large drive – data
3. very big drive ( slower )- backup of both of the above.

I'm not confused. The puter has two logical drives – then I dicsovered they were actually two physical drives rather than partitions. At that time I assumed that that meant there must be a raid option in the BIOS – hence the question. Well, there isn't. Which made me think it was weird to have to 250Gb drives instead of 1 500Gb, especially in a laptop where power consumption is a factor.

However after thinking about it a bit more I think druidh could be right. I read someone doing an office productivity benchmark (which is typical usage for this puter although not actually office use) and Raid 0 gave a 5% increase – which is negligible.

[pedant mode]
RAID 0 isn't RAID at all.
[/pedant mode off]

I'm not confused.

My second choice then, you worded things badly.

RAID 0 isn't RAID at all.

So we should all refer to it as 'not-proper-raid-0' then. That'll aid communication, won't it?

Back in your room geek.

RAID 0 isn't RAID at all

You've got a point – there's bugger-all redundancy.

So RAID-0 should actually be called AIDS-0? Can't think why that hasn't caught on.

Raid 0 is a way of making one big drive from 2 or more disks, if one disk goes tits up and you do not have a backup of your data, you are as previously said scr3wed.

Raid 1 will mirror drives, eg 2*200GB disks will give you a resilient 200GB disk in case one fails.

I would recommend cranberries solution, with one small mod

partition primary disk with a 50GB partition and the rest as one disk, OS and apps which have no recoverable configuration only on c:
d: apps which are encapsulated
e: cd
f: data

external disk as a backup.

Raid 0 is a bad idea. I would never use it in my data centre.

hope this helps, now go enjoy the sun

Agree with all the above. I have Raid 0 on my home desktop simply because Dell configured it that way, completely pointless and just a marketing gimmick I expect.

At work RAID 5 and RAID 1+0 are common. RAID 5 for the backup drives and 1+0 for database data drives on servers still with physical local drives. Nearly everything else is SAN now, which leads into another debate, why do IT managers not understand that SAN is not put in place for performance reasons?? Why do I always get the same questions about database performance issues on servers that moved over to using the cheap SAN… drives me mad!

oooh a san debate? perhaps a new thread needed?

Raid 0 is a way of making one big drive from 2 or more disks, if one disk goes tits up and you do not have a backup of your data, you are as previously said scr3wed.

We know.

I would never use it in my data centre.

Me neither. But is my laptop running a data centre? 🙂

naa, just pointing out appropriate use of technology