First Time Setting Up Raid... Questions..

[ThePunkerGuy]

Hi, I was thinking about setting up Raid with my 2 Western Digital 40.0 gig Caviar hard drives. I have a few question being this is my first time setting it up.
1. Does raid wear down the hard drives more than normal usage?
2. Do western digital hard drives work good with raid?
3. I purchased one of the 40 gigs about 6 months ago and i just purchased the second one a week ago. They are the same model. Will they work ok on Raid? I heard something about them having to be out of the same lott number or something.. help?
4. Does anyone know of any good Guides on setting up Raid?
5. What are the different types of raid and which one should i use (i heard i should use Raid 0)
6. Can i access the raid drive as 1 drive through DOS
- Mike

 

[Qumahlin]

1. Raid will not wear the drives more then normal

2. WD drives work beautiful at anything

3. It doesn't matter when the drives were purchased as long as
they are the same size

4. sorry not off hand

5.Raid 0 basically makes large reads and writes faster because data is "striped" between the drives (0's on one drive 1's on the other) Raid 1 just basically mirrors the drive

6.As long as your bios or raid controller is all set up fine you should be able to access your raid "array" as one drive

7.Remember...if you use raid 0...and one drive fails..everything on the other drive is useless

 

[gonaads]

Here's a link to RAID Arrays, it explains the benefits, costs, tradeoffs and limitations. Plus RAID levels and configuration and implementation. Use the menu links on the left window to go to the page that most interests you. Or just read it all.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/