Yes. It works by using "stripes" (if I remember rightly) of data. Basically if you think of a file cut into strips, then put strip 1 onto the 1st drive, then strip 2 onto the 2nd, then strip 3 onto the 1st etc. This is something like how it apparently works. ie. it's not for mirroring, it's for running like a bat out of hell
Apparently you should get almost double performance, depending on the hardware. But to create it then it must "rebuild" the drive. Don't know if software (partition magic?) can handle the rebuild, but am guessing you would need a third drive (depending on how many drives are in the array) to build from.
Downsides are that you are using more power, so noise etc. And if one drive fails drastically, then *all* the data is screwed. Pretty much completely. Upsides are it should run a fair bit faster, and you get to keep the whole space of both drives. ie. one big drive.
I did a fair bit of research when I did mine. I originally was going for a 1/2 terrabyte array, but in the end opted for speed and got two 15k SATA Raptors in a RAID 0 array (almost cried sending back that amount of space). I only end up with about 150gb, but it is f**king fast... (and I can always add another drive or two
). Put it this way, the same machine in XP Pro used to take about 10 revolutions (you know what I mean) of the old XP loading screen. After installing the drives it took 2. Oh yes. Even now after tonnes of installations (no defrags) etc, it still only takes between 3 and 4.
Oh, but I installed from scratch, so don't know what happens with existing data.
Cheers
I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
