Does software RAID 1 (mirroring) in Windows 7 improve read speeds?
I'd like to set up RAID 1 to help protect my important documents (yes, yes, I know it's not a backup), but performance is also important to me. As I understand it, RAID 1 should theoretically be able to improve my read speeds by n times, where n is the number of disks.
Is Windows 7 able to get this boost? I haven't been able to find out this information anywhere.
Answer
I think this blog answers it best. It shows actual speed tests for raid 0 and raid 1 between a single disk, windows software raid, hardware raid, and fake raid.
http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=429
UPDATE: A more recent forum had a post from someone who tested Windows software RAID showing that the read speed was much faster, but the write speed was slower. If that is true then Windows software RAID is utilizing both disks independently. I have not verified these results myself. See the posting by ColgateJr near the bottom:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/250390-32-does-raid-increase-read-speed
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