StanT could it be you are referring to RAID 1 not 0.
That link is very informative on RAID.
Following is a summary from that link and additions from my experience.
Different RAID levels have different purposes, none of them eliminates the need for (off-site) backup.
With 2 hard drives there are 2 options, mirroring or striping the data.
Mirroring lets the 2 drive act as a single drive with the size of the smaller drive (they should be identical ). Performance is similar to having single drive, gain or loss in performance depends on the setup. In case of single drive failure the drive can be replaced and RAID rebuilt (slowly) without data loss.
Striping lets the 2 drive act as a single drive with the combined sizes of both drives. Performance is close to combined performance of the drives (2x). In case of single drive failure all data is lost (Generally everything is lost, depending on the setup a professional data recovery might get some data back at high cost).
These are general statements, actual performance and redundancy depends on hardware and software included in the setup.
Hope this is of help to someone.
ZB
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Sodomy non sapiens. : I'm buggered if I know
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