RAID was intended for SCSI discs, and was created when disks spun really slow (4200rpm or below). When used for IDE or SATA, it tends to be abusive to the drives, and is often a reason they seem to always die so quickly. The drives were not made with RAID in mind.
The "R" in RAID stands for "redundant" (redundant array independent/inexpensive disks).
RAID level 0 has no redundacy whatsoever, so it's technically not a "RAID". It just using a method based on actual RAID. RAID also comes with major issues in data fragmentation. I've seen many drives lose data from fragmentation, before the array fully failed in an orgy of cascading errors. In some cases, the drives just burnt out from RAID use.
RAID must use identical disks, not only in size, but often in model/speed of the drive. It's not suggested to mix brands, cache, RPMs, etc. You can't non-RAID a part of a disk marked for RAID/JBOD. It's not going to be partitioned in a way you're used to. When you try to mix discs, you're making a
JBOD, or "just a bunch of disks". This is just as bad as RAID0, in terms of data integrity and backup.
Current SATA-II 3Gb drives (and depending on the situation, SATA-I 1.5Gb and IDE/PATA drives), are all fine for even the most resource-hungry consumer or typical business use. This included compressed high definition (HD) video and most all standard definition (SD) video.
From my observations from 1995-2010, RAID 0 really was not done very often. In the early/mid 2000s, it gained some popularity by video gamer nerds that didn't know any better -- they falsely assumed it would make game playing faster. That, of course, was mostly ridiculous -- the real bottleneck was the graphics card, RAM and CPU -- and its use often resulted in the gamer losing the entire computer in an inevitable crash. Of course, that same crowd never seemed to back up their data either, so they'd lose everything. I think its use largely peaked a couple of years ago, judging from conversations I've seen in various users forums online. Gamers in general have started to learn more about the tools they use as toys.
Off-hand,
there are only THREE groups that I can think of
that really have need for the speeds of RAID:
- Broadcast servers, as used by television stations, video uplink/downlinks (satellite/cable providers), etc
- Web servers -- including database and intranet servers
- SDI in/out or uncompressed HD video editing servers or workstations
Many gigabytes (terabytes?) of data are moved at a rapid pace in those settings, and RAID is crucial for both speed AND redundancy. You'll almost never see a RAID0, but rather RAID5, RAID15, RAID10, etc. The discs in use are almost always high-speed 15K SCSI, and designed for RAID use.
RAID 0 is generally not a solution to any problem. So you'd be better off explaining the problem, and we could come up with a real solution.
I use a RAID1 external drive for editing RAW photos, which gives both speed and redundancy improvements over a traditional external disk. It's a pair of SCSI drives and connects to a laptop via eSATA, as it's taken to on-site photo assignments. Even standard def video is not as intensive as trying to load 500 thumbnails from a folder of 15MP NEF files. The unit has a dedicated fan, because RAIDed drives run hot.
