Setting up "Raid" with only two hard drives? (G5 powermac)

I've just gone and got a second hard drive for my G5 powermac =) and i
heard that i could set the two drives up as "raid" which would impove
my computers performance by being able to use the two hard drives
simultanusly or something like that (i just want more juice, not too
much of a nerd, sorry)


So i've copied all my importaint infomation off the hard drive to an
external hard drive for safe keeping, and installed the second inturnal

hard drive (easy enough).


The problem is how do I go about erasing both the disks, making them
work as raid, then installing my stuff back on?


Any help would be much apperciated!!

gmdenton.RemoveThis@xtra.co.nz wrote:
> I've just gone and got a second hard drive for my G5 powermac =) and i
> heard that i could set the two drives up as "raid" which would impove
> my computers performance by being able to use the two hard drives
> simultanusly or something like that (i just want more juice, not too
> much of a nerd, sorry)
>
>
> So i've copied all my importaint infomation off the hard drive to an
> external hard drive for safe keeping, and installed the second inturnal
>
> hard drive (easy enough).
>
>
> The problem is how do I go about erasing both the disks, making them
> work as raid, then installing my stuff back on?
>
>
> Any help would be much apperciated!!
>


RAID is an acronym for "redundant array of independent disks." Why use
RAID? At its most basic level, configuring a RAID can help achieve
higher I/O bandwidth or provide redundant backup of data.

Joining multiple disks together as a single volume to which data is
written to and read from all disks simultaneously is called "striping,"
and provides a performance boost for particular applications, such as
capturing uncompressed video or transferring very large files. Striping
is denoted as RAID 0. RAID 0 offers the highest performance in terms of
disk throughput speed. Think of RAID 0 as having a bathtub with
multiple faucets and drains -- you can fill and drain the tub much
faster than if it only had one faucet and drain. RAID 0 has no
redundancy, so if just one of the drives in a RAID 0 set fails, all data
is lost. For this reason, it's risky to use RAID 0 to store the
operating system, applications or sensitive data unless you regularly
back up your data to another drive or storage medium.

"Mirroring" is denoted as RAID 1. In RAID 1, each drive or volume has
an exact duplicate on another drive or volume, so if one drive fails,
all data has been preserved on the mirror drive. RAID 1 offers no
performance benefit, and may actually slightly degrade disk throughput.

Higher RAID levels indicate different combinations of striping and
mirroring. For example, RAID 3 uses one drive to store redundancy
information, called parity information, and the remaining disks are
striped together for improved throughput speed. If one of the drives in
a RAID 3 set fails, the drive can be replaced and the RAID will be able
to rebuild itself with no data loss. If two drives fail in a RAID 3
set, then all data is lost. RAID 5 stripes all drives together and
distributes parity information across all drives as well, so data may be
reconstructed even in the event of multiple simultaneous disk failures.
You can learn more about RAID levels here:

http://www.raid-arrays.net/