Here are some graphs I generated using HD Tune to compare some different RAID0 configurations.  I was a bit nervous about I/O performance on my HTPC considering the system could be writing four HD streams simultaneously while four separate processes could be reading those files and writing them out in a different format, all while clients could be potentially reading up to three of those files at the same time.

After testing, I decided that SSDs were too expensive for little storage when a 4-drive RAID0 stripe performs acceptably.  This configuration is obviously not fault-tolerant, but the non-recording files are fairly static and can be backed up periodically and any recordings that I want to keep can either be archived or obtained through other means ;-)

All tests except the single drive were done using the motherboard-based Intel ICH10R controller.

2x120GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD, RAID0


4x500GB WD5000AAKS, RAID0


2x500GB WD5000AAKS, RAID0


320GB Single Laptop SATA Drive (for comparison)