What does Raid 0 "Stripe" means when they are referring to hard disks?

I am thinking of buying a Dell system with 3 TB HD and 12,288 MB DDR3
RAM but I want to confirm with you guys that it simply means two disks
and it can be used in the normal way like at present - Master/Slave
configurations.

Thanks.

"Sonia" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:ift953$jfs$(E-Mail Removed)...
> What does Raid 0 "Stripe" means when they are referring to hard disks?
>
> I am thinking of buying a Dell system with 3 TB HD and 12,288 MB DDR3 RAM
> but I want to confirm with you guys that it simply means two disks and it
> can be used in the normal way like at present - Master/Slave
> configurations.
>
> Thanks.
>

Basically in your case a 3 TB HDD RAID 0 setup is two 1.5 TB drives tied
together to create one 3 TB drive letter. Part of the data in a file is
written to one drive and part is written to the second drive to increase
speed of the write and read process (data can travel down the pipe faster
than the pump can supply it so they put in two pumps (drives).) The main
issue with RAID 0 is that there is no automatic data backup. If one drive
fails all the data on both drives is unrecoverable (unless you have a backup
off of the RAID system.

From Wikipedia: "A RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume)
splits data evenly across two or more disks (striped) with no parity
information for redundancy. RAID 0 was not one of the original RAID levels
and provides no data redundancy. RAID 0 is normally used to increase
performance, although it can also be used as a way to create a small number
of large virtual disks out of a large number of small physical ones."

What you probably CAN NOT do in this case is use the built in recovery media
(and the disks that you can create) to split the drives into two 1.5 TB
drives to use in the way you mentioned as the OS will have the RAID drivers
and setup already done to recreate the original setup. Personally I would
ask Dell if you can order the system without the drives combined into a RAID
configuration.

Sonia wrote:

> What does Raid 0 "Stripe" means when they are referring to hard disks?

You telling us that you don't have the resources or initiative to do
your own research on what is RAID?

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

> I am thinking of buying a Dell system with 3 TB HD and 12,288 MB DDR3
> RAM but I want to confirm with you guys that it simply means two disks
> and it can be used in the normal way like at present - Master/Slave
> configurations.

Just because a motherboard includes RAID support doesn't mean you have
to use it. Of course, what you get from a pre-built system depends on
what you ordered presuming you knew what you ordered. Contact pre-sales
support at Dell about their *unidentified* model (you'll have to
identify it to them). They'll know what they're selling.

Sonia wrote:
> What does Raid 0 "Stripe" means when they are referring to hard disks?
>
> I am thinking of buying a Dell system with 3 TB HD and 12,288 MB DDR3
> RAM but I want to confirm with you guys that it simply means two disks
> and it can be used in the normal way like at present - Master/Slave
> configurations.
>
> Thanks.
>

What is the model number of the machine you're interested in ?

If I was buying a computer, I wouldn't want the boot partition
on a RAID 0. The RAID 0 stripe, puts the odd blocks on one
drive, and the even blocks on the other drive. It's a means
of doubling storage bandwidth. But if one hard drive fails,
half the data is gone. I'd want the OS to be on a single drive,
to make recovery a bit easier.

+------+------+
| Even | Odd | <--- RAID 0 for user data
+-------------+

+------+
| OS | <--- Separate disk for OS, to make some
| Disk | recovery situations a bit easier.
+------+

The thing is, RAIDs throw up status and error messages,
more frequently than single disks. If my OS was on a
separate disk, then I'd know I could boot safely, while
contemplating what to do about the status/error message.
(Like, post a question about it, in a newsgroup.)

Under normal circumstances, you should be able to take
the RAID apart, and make two drives from it. As
you surmised, like this -

+------+
| Data |
+------+

+------+
| OS |
| Disk |
+------+

But to manipulate storage devices like that, you'd
need an additional drive for backup/copy space, to
move things around. On a new computer system, there
will be very few GB of data, so it won't take long to
move the data off, and set up the system the way you want.
You won't be copying around, 3TB of info.

On my new laptop, it took about three days of work,
to set things up the way I wanted them, so you shouldn't
underestimate the mess that arrives on a new machine.

Perhaps you could order the machine, set up in a non-RAID
configuration, but still with the two disks inside it.
It'll save you some time, if you buy it set up closer
to your usage pattern.

Another point, is storage volumes above 2.2 TB, may require
GPT specification for storage. The fact your RAID0 is
3TB in size, may already present an issue when it comes
to booting (from an older OS). That might only be an
issue, if you were dual booting, say, WinXP 32 bit.

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

Paul