I have recently been looking into video editing, and although I haven't started using/learning it myself yet, I'm curious about a few things. In Logan's videos for editing computer builds he talks about running RAID 0, and I get what it is and how it works, my question is what is it used for exactly? I understand it is a way to save data, but why would you need such high speeds of writing data for video editing, especially when SSDs and a RAID card are so expensive? Sorry if this question is in the wrong section I wasn't exactly sure where to put it.
raid 0 is used to make 2 drives work like one... it disperses the data between the 2 drives in 'stripes', so you can effectively read twice as much data. downside is, if one drive fails, you loose all the data on both drives
Having SSD's in RAID 0 is probably overkill for most people, as current SSD's are plenty fast for every scenario a common user could ever think of. Having good old fashioned HDD's in RAID 0 makes more sense to me and it's still the more common setup.
Most motherboards offer some RAID capabilities, so you wouldn't have to buy an expensive RAID card to get started. Though dedicated RAID cards usually offer better performance and stability.
You ask what RAID 0 is used for, but you kinda already answered it. It's for getting the maximum amount of performance possible. And as with maximum performance everywhere else, it isn't cheap ^^ Search for RAID on Wikipedia, there's a very decent article explaining the different RAID setups and their drawbacks and strengths.
Ok, but beyond the average user and in regards to video editing why is that preformance so important? I mean, why would someone need to write data so fast? I'm assuming it's more than just, "I'm an enthusiast, I want the best of the best." type of thing, but I could be wrong.
well when your transcoding video for example it's gonna be faster as it would be able to pull the data off the drive and write it back down in the new format faster as it's a simaltaniouse read/write operation. which is area that storage drive are not normally optimized for. there are a few out ther that are like the corsair nuetron and certain OCZ Pci.e ssd's for enterpize grade stuff. or encoding on the go is another one that benefits. although this config really see's the benefit when your working with hugh files on large bitrates.