RAID 0 vs RAID 1

[Godgrave]

Is it really that important to check if the External Hard Drive has either a Raid 1 or Raid 0 capability? I'll quote a website technician on his thoughts;


I would highly recommend that you go with a RAID-1 (Mirroring) configuration. Having a RAID 0 disk configuration if any one of the two drives fail then the entire data set on both drives will become unavailable. The reason for this is in a RAID 0 configuration, information is written across the 2 drives. Hence, if any one drive fails, you would only have half of the data necessary to allow a drive set to be mounted and visible by any OS. There by making both drives useless. It is important to also note that unlike RAID 1, replacing the broken drive does not rebuild your RAID 0 set. This forces you to create a new RAID 0 which will be completely devoid of any old data.

In a RAID 1 configuration, if you have 1 drive fail. The mirrored drive picks up without missing a step. The trade off here is total drive storage vs. redundancy. Where RAID 0 offer more drive space but no redundancy.
Eppy, I can't find the Western Digital 500 Gig Ext HD on newegg :( *slams table*

How's this;http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148235

[Eppy]

raid doesnt mean crap for jsut a single drive jsut ignore it :P

thats nice...but so is this :P
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136061

and here is the 500 GB WD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136025

[gokuDX7]

Having a RAID 0 disk configuration if any one of the two drives fail then the entire data set on both drives will become unavailable.

You only have one HDD right? Why bother with raid then?

[Sledgstone]

you don't need to worry about raid, just the storage space and probably brand. most externals have decent cache and speeds so you don't even need to really worry about that either.