What exactly is a stripe, i hear it all the time in RAID 0. Is it like, the width of the cable? or what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID Actually not a bad explanation. Look at the "standard levels" section.

i know what stripping is, i mean in that RAID FAQ it says "you can change ur stripe and cluster size" Whats it mean by change stripe size/width? i know how RAID 0 works in general. But i dont want to get my 2nd HDD and be dumbfounded on some details when installing.

The stripe size is what size the parts of a file are broken into .

Small stripes work well for lots of small files and larger for large media files...

So you have a stripe size of 256k and you have tons of small 100k images, they will not go on both drives since they fit within a single stripe....so there will be no speed advantage with small files and this strip size

Drive A Drive B
100 0 ----- 100k file

On the other hand if you have a much of 1 meg files they will be broken up giving you the raid advantage you want....

Drive A Drive B
256 256 \ 1 meg file
256 256 /


Setting the size too big can cut performance on small files, but setting it too small can cut performance on large files....

A general balance is normally 32k-64k(some say 128). But if you are working with lots of large multimedia files larger will be more beneficial.

Lets say a 4 meg file
Drive A Drive B
256 256 \
256 256 |
256 256 |
256 256 | 4 meg file
256 256 |
256 256 |
256 256 |
256 256 /


Hope this clears it up a bit

yes it does thank u. Good explanation