But Is It Worth The Trouble?

In my humble opinion, Intel's Matrix RAID is a really useful and innovative technology for many consumers. And yes, if your platform allows you to setup a Matrix RAID array, I'd say go ahead! But just remember that Matrix RAID is not a RAID 0+1 or RAID 5 replacement!

Over my years of experience, I've encountered many hard disk crashes and have lost quite a lot of precious data. Yes, you may say that backing up data regularly is the key. I agree a hundred and one percent with that. However, backing up every day or every hour can be impractical. And you never know when a hard disk will crash!

In fact, I just recently suffered a hard disk crash on my notebook. Fortunately though, the second partition was still accessible and I managed to burn all my data there into a DVD. But we can't always be so lucky every time. Therefore, this is where RAID 1 or Mirror RAID comes in handy.

The usual reason why we don't set up a mirror RAID array is usually because of the high cost. We need to buy at least two hard disks for the capacity of one. But as consumers, data redundancy isn't always as important as having more capacity. Therefore, we usually neglect data reliability and redundancy for more capacity.

RAID 0 or stripping is, however, a different story. This is because you'd still get the capacity of both hard disks combined as well as the performance benefit of RAID 0. This is why we see many consumers are setting up RAID 0 arrays.

Of course, those who can afford it can always set up a RAID 0+1 or RAID 0 and 1 using four hard disks or more. However, with Matrix RAID, even consumers on a budget can now get better data protection without the forfeit in capacity.

Matrix RAID 1 Vs. Dedicated Hard Disk

There is one possible alternative to increase the availability of critical data. One can actually install a separate hard disk to house all the critical data while leaving another two hard disk running as a RAID 0 array. However, let's take a quick look how the industry generally regards the RAID setup's MTBF compared to a single hard disk's MTBF.

RAID 0 MTBF = lowest MTBF / number of hard disk in array

RAID 1 MTBF = 150% of lowest MTBF in the array

As you can see, RAID 1 array's MTBF is generally higher than a single hard disk by itself. Therefore, let's assume a scenario where all the hard disks start their life at the same time. In such a scenario, a RAID 1 array will able to survive longer and is theoretically safer than a dedicated hard disk on its own.

Also, bear in mind that when a hard disk fails, a RAID 1 array has a higher chance of survival as there's a duplicate of itself on another hard disk. Therefore, despite sharing the same two hard disks as the RAID 0 volume using the Matrix RAID array, the RAID 1 volume is still better than a single dedicated hard disk.