Do i need 2 SATA drives

[args]

Do i need 2 of the same size and make SATA drives for RAID 0 in win xp or can i just have 1 large disk drive.

I remember when i did RAID 0 in xp using ata 133 had to have to of the same.
:t :) :rolleyes:

[Rocketmech]

You need 2 drives for Raid 0 , IDE or SATA doesn't matter . They can be of different size , but your limited to the smallest drives size . Better to use 2 of the same drives .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks#RAID_0

[zepper]

If you just want a large drive, you can use spanned mode (aka JBOD) which is like RAID-0 but doesn't use striping so you can add any two drives together. You won't get the performance of RAID-0 but you can use all the space. As was written above, the larger drive(s) can only have the same no. of stripes as the smallest drive in the array.

.bh.

[Sterling_Aug]

And when the RAID array breaks you can have lots of fun reinstalling all of your programs and reloading your data. Without a real business reason, RAID is not for home use.

[tantone]

To a certain extent, I agree with sterling. 99% of home users would be asking for needless trouble to go with a RAID config. However, RAID 0 is useful if you actually need disk i/o to be higher for some reason.

Now, that said, if you REALLY need a RAID config for disk i/o, then you freakin' better go with a RAID 5 to have some sort of data integrity.

Back to your question: I strongly recommend two *identical* hdd's for a RAID 0. And if you can afford that, then you should be able to afford the 3rd hdd (preferably of at least 75% or 100% the size of the array) for regular and thorough backups.

RAID 0, while possibly increasing disk i/o performance, also doubles your chances for catastrophic hardware failure and data loss.