In article , Ken Blake
wrote:


I've bought a new terabyte disk, and now have two terabyte disks side by
side (which I might RAID once I clean them out - but I never did RAID
before and googling finds that there are a LOT of up-front decisions to
make).

If you mean RAID 0 (striping), although it sounds like it should speed
up disk access, my experience is that it doesn't.

then you did something wrong, perhaps using a ****ty raid controller or
it was bottlenecked with a slow link, such as usb 2.

raid 0 definitely speeds things up, but doubles the risk of failure.

If you mean RAID 1 (mirroring), be aware that it is *not* a backup
solution. RAID 1 uses two or more drives, each a duplicate of the
others, to provide redundancy, not backup. It's used in situations
(almost always within corporations, not in homes) where any downtown
can't be tolerated, because the way it works is that if one drive
fails the other takes over seamlessly.

correct, although it's sometimes used in homes too.

the other issue is that the reliability of modern drives virtually
guarantees a failure on rebuild, particularly with raid 5.