Thinking about Raid'in these raptors.

I have (2) WD360 First gen raptor hdd's (10k rpm) and was wondering about this whole RAID 0 or 10 thing. My motherboard does have RAID support. What would I need for just the 2 HDD's? I am not worried about losing data, since these drives are kinda old and I only keep PC games on it. I also have the original disks and create a folder to make a copy of multiplayer stats for some of them.

I keep hearing about the part of if 1 drive crashes for RAID 0, you lose both, but these drives like I said, have never failed me as of yet and not worried about it. I have seen and understood what each RAID is and whats expected of it. I have a backup 3rd HDD WD Blue Caviar 500gb that has all the data as a back up and if 1 drive crashes, I will set it back to normal (no Raid) and the drive that didnt crash, partition 0 it, then put a few games back on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

If your not worried about data loss then you can go raid 0 for performance. Just keep in mind that if 1 drive fails from the raid then its all gone. There is no raid 10, its raid 1+0.

Software raid is going to be using your own cpu resources. If you have to reinstall windows you might have a problem.. Dont know, never done it.

If using windows xp- start, right click on my computer, manage. Under Storage select Disk Management. And you should should see both of the raptors and from here you can set them as a new volume and or put them into a stripped array. I think windows 7 should be the same way. Ill have to take a look when I get home.. I have a raid 0 with a couple of WD drives on my gaming rig.

cool man, thanks for the info. I went with RAID 0 anyways, seems that if 1 hard drive fails, its all gone. I went with dual boot mode for 3rd HDD 320gb and game save data as well, so if I lose it, I can use the 1 good raptor for just games.

I dont see why other people do this. Most people are afraid of losing data, but putting them in stripe config, it will not make your HDD lifespan lose anything. Acts just like a normal HDD and lifespan is just the same as not RAID'ing them. So, I guess its up to the user. I have heard many go with RAID 0 and no problems.

I am however, going to build another PC, but with 1 SSD for win7 and drivers and a 640gb Black Caviar for games/media. Should be good enough on next build this summer.

If your looking for a speed increase then it may help but it all depends. If the game was installed on a raid 0 you may see faster loading times but if its a internet game I don't think you will see any difference. When I updated my gaming rig I said heck with it and installed the OS and everything on 2xWD 500GB - 7200rpm Sata 3.0Gb/s, 32MB Cache Raid 0.. I have a dedicated backup server on a gig network so doing a reinstall or getting files is no problem. I haven't had a issue for over a year so far...

By the time you get around building your new rig and if you haven't purchased the WD640.. you should be able to get a 1tb or possibly a 2tb for the same price..

Just purchased a Seagate 2TB SATA 6.0 2TB for my unraid server @ $148. Darn good price I thought.