Raid0 setup - What should 'my computer' say?

I'm not a hardware person, so maybe someone here could help me. I ordered a PC from Dell that has "Serial ATA Raid 0 "Stripe"(7200RPM)Dual HDD" (2x500gb). However, I've just noticed that there's only one HD of 1TB (which is the default option when ordering). Should I be seeing two HDDs in "My Computer" or does the Raid0 setup simply improve performance rather than have (and display) two individual HDDs? How can I check if my computer does have a 'raid0' setup?

Thanks

XSL

Posted 2010-05-26T18:55:52.997

Reputation: 119

Answers

RAID0 splits data across 2 drives. So if you have 2x500GB you would see a single 1TB drive.

So everything seems to be in check.

Mitch Dempsey

Posted 2010-05-26T18:55:52.997

Reputation: 1 116

RAID works down at the hardware level. As far as Windows is concerned that's just one really fast drive. It doesn't have any way to know more or less than that because all of it's hardware probes are handled by the RAID bios.

Satanicpuppy

Posted 2010-05-26T18:55:52.997

Reputation: 6 169

All I want to add is that YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST BACK UP YOUR DATA WITH RAID-0!! Take it from someone who kept putting it off and putting it off and finally paid the price for it.

Matt DiTrolio

Posted 2010-05-26T18:55:52.997

Reputation: 129

1You must backup your data regardless of what flavour of RAID you're using. – ThatGraemeGuy – 2010-09-21T15:54:31.460

Agreed, but I felt it was important to stress it even more with RAID-0. Complete failure chance goes up with every single drive you add. If you use RAID-1 or 1+0, you won't lose any data if one drive goes bad. – Matt DiTrolio – 2010-09-21T16:09:01.453