# A Dumb RAID Question (Probably)



## Mr. CoBalt (Aug 31, 2009)

So just a quick question brought on by idle Saturday afternoon curiosity 

Let's say I have 2x500GB drives + a 1TB drive. Can I RAID 0 (stripe) the two 500s (thereby creating a 1TB stripe) and then RAID 1 (mirror) that RAID 0 set to the single 1TB? Like an ugly RAID0+1 without the second striped set?

Yes, I realize this is ridiculous, and yes, I realize the end result would not be super-speedy (unless somehow the single 1TB is as quick as a 2x500 stripe) so there's really no benefit. It's more of a hypothetical; I'm just wondering if anybody's tried it with Disk Utility, maybe even benchmarked it…

So whaddaya think?


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

As far as I know, you can't do it that way.

You could do RAID10, but that requires 4 disks, minimum.

Another option would be to use software to clone the RAID to the 1TB, but that's messy.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

Mr. CoBalt said:


> So just a quick question brought on by idle Saturday afternoon curiosity
> 
> Let's say I have 2x500GB drives + a 1TB drive. Can I RAID 0 (stripe) the two 500s (thereby creating a 1TB stripe) and then RAID 1 (mirror) that RAID 0 set to the single 1TB? Like an ugly RAID0+1 without the second striped set?
> 
> ...


No it can't be done that way. Quite frankly it would only make you less secure even if you could anyway. Just do your RAID 0 And use CC or SD to back up your array. This is the safest way and in fact only way to use three drives to accomplish what it seems you are trying to do.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

John Clay said:


> As far as I know, you can't do it that way.
> 
> You could do RAID10, but that requires 4 disks, minimum.
> 
> *Another option would be to use software to clone the RAID to the 1TB, but that's messy*.


Not messy at all... CC and SD will do this perfectly and easliy. Don't what you mean by being messy? I used to have this kind of set up and it was not an issue of any kind.


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