Anyone here notice benefits of RAID 0 and transferring large number of files?

I'm considering adding a second hard drive and a RAID controller to have a RAID 0 setup. The problem is that I'm not sure if I will notice any performance gain in the real world. How many of you guys consider a RAID 0 setup to be essential when dealing with large files?

RAID 0 will give you an increase in HDD write speeds, however if you referring to the transferring of data from your CF card to your HDD, I highly doubt it would help you much since youd above all going to be limited to the transfer rate of the CF card and memory card reader. To my knowledge the fastest CF card transfer rate is at 45MB/s from the Sandisk Ducati series CF cards while the average SATA2 HDD is at 3GB/s. See the choke. Now for creating files and saving them on the computer itself, thats where youll see the benefit of a RAID setup. Keep in mind though RAID 0 is not the best for security. You are essentially banking on not just one HDD never failing, but two as your data is now spanned across two HDDs instead of one. Personally I use RAID 1 for increased read times and security. Check this wiki article for more info: LINK

RAID0 is not worth the effort and the risks generated for the benefits it provides unless you need to stream one humongous chunk of continuous data from one place to another.

Striping is best for video-related applications.... and honestly only really worth it with a good heavily cached RAID controller and more than two drives.

Most motherboard RAIDs are not going to give you the kind of bang you're hoping for -- even if your CF card/reader could keep up (it can't)

RAID 0 is nice and it will increase your HD bandwidth and it is quite noticeable if you work with large photoshop files. For example I am scanning all my old photographs. It is easier for me to scan multiple pictures at once and then break them up in PS. These files are huge some approaching 2 gig. I do notice the speed difference between my main PC and my backup PC as the backup does not have a RAID array.

However, running RAID 0 is risky. You are doubling the odds off catastrophic failure affecting your data. If either disk goes, your screwed and restoring stuff from your backups. So, if you really want to go RAID 0, I recommend going either RAID 0+1 or RAID 1+0. It takes more drives but give you the speed boost with the addition of redundancy. That way if a drive fails, you simply replace the drive and there is no data lost.

I'm currently working some bugs out of my RAID 10 setup right now, but when I get done I'll run a couples tests for you if you want. Also I just had a hdd fail and I was able to keep on working. Nice.

Yea RAID 0+1 or equiv would be the way to go, but then youre talking a min of 4 HDDs.

RAID 5 is almost worthless with today's hdd capacities, and raid 0 it risky with 2 drives and gets worse with more. If you need the speed at any cost though, RAID 0 is the way to go.

I had Raid 0 on my desktop, motherboard driven. When my motherboard pooped out and I could not replace it, my raid array was worthless. It had to be reformatted. I lost a lot of data that day.

Yes, it isn't for backup. It is either for speed or to continue running in case of a hdd failure.

adam8080 wrote in post #6384758
RAID 5 is almost worthless with today's hdd capacities...

I don't understand what HHD capacity has to do with it. If a disc fails what difference does the capacity make? My current desktop has RAID 0 as did my previous desktop. My next one will have RAID 5 and, I'm sure, larger discs than I now use.

jr_senator wrote in post #6393251
I don't understand what HHD capacity has to do with it. If a disc fails what difference does the capacity make? My current desktop has RAID 0 as did my previous desktop. My next one will have RAID 5 and, I'm sure, larger discs than I now use.

http://blogs.zdnet.com​/storage/?p=162

Now I understand.