CHAPTER 4: Advanced Hardware Setup
36
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How it increases performance
The more drives you have in your RAID 0 array,
the faster the potential drive reading
performance. All hard drives have limitations on
how fast they can read and write files. If half a file
is stored on one RAID 0 drive and the other half
on another RAID 0 drive, each drive only has to
read half of the file. So, the entire file is accessed
by the computer up to twice as fast (using a
two-drive RAID 0 array). In a three-drive RAID 0
array, if the file is evenly distributed among the
drives, each drive must read only a third of the
file, and so on. If the entire file happens to be
stored on only one of the drives, the file is
accessed at the same speed as if it were on a
standard hard drive setup. Dividing up files
between multiple hard drives like this is called
striping
.
How it makes file storage cheaper
Because RAID 0 lets your computer see multiple
hard drives as a single drive, you can install
several lower capacity (less expensive) drives
and have the same single-drive storage
simplicity and capacity as a larger, more
expensive hard drive.
A
C
E
B
D
F
RAID 0
8511781.book Page 36 Tuesday, October 10, 2006 4:41 PM
