To raid or not to raid?

[jeo]

Hi guys, am building a new rig today and need some advice. I already have a 500gb internal sata and am going to buy another 2tb. I was just going to buy a single 2tb but then I remembered about Raid setups, i have never attempted it, is it worth it? I'm building a mid range PC for gaming and would like ultimate performance from all components. Is it easy to do and is it risky?
thanks

[kalniel]

Not worth it at all. If you want speed, get an SSD.

[Biscuit]

The RAID configurations which are available to a 2 drive setup are 1 and 0. RAID 1 will duplicate the files across both disks which has no benefit to performance but is good if you want to make sure your data is safe in the case of one of the drives failing. RAID 0 will improve performance however you will probably find that spending the cost of 2 x HDD on an SSD will yield much better results.

[smargh]

SSD as the OS drive. Use the 2TB drive drive(s) to store big stuff and your pagefile etc. Clone the SSD and data drives to spare cheap disks to keep somewhere safe & secure, preferably off-site, to simply swap over if a drive fails.

RAID is not a backup - it's only of use for you to keep running 24/7 with no interruption while a drive has failed. For homes users, it's better to occasionally image or clone the drive(s) and keep it safe as a backup. I prefer cloning so that I can just swap the drives over - it works well. I've used Casper XP (now Casper 6? 7?) to recover from a failed drive before. Use online backup services (or enlist the help of a friend) to back up critical data regularly.

However, I do use proper hardware RAID 1 (Adaptec 3405) for my locally-stored data, but only because I keep my PC on 24/7 and it serves some functions for my day job where I need it to be accessible all the time. I also back up all data on the RAID1 to an off-site NAS. The NAS also has hardware RAID 5. I also periodically sync the data on the NAS, too, but to cheap non-RAID SATA drives.