Can I set up RAID Mirroring & Striping on 2 drives by splitting each into 2 partitions?

I am having a tough time picturing this. What would be mirrored and what would be striped? How many TB do you want in the end?

@jaytkay What I would like to end up with is the equivalent of one RAID-1 array with ½ terabyte capacity by using 4 virtual drives and RAID mirroring/striping. I guess if need be, I can go buy 2 more 1-terabyte drives and ise 4 physical drives, but I don’t store a bunch of movies, so I don’t see myself really needing a full terabyte of drive capacity any time soon. I am making do with 120 gigs right now.

I suppose this depends on the RAID controller. I’ve never seen a RAID controller that will detect virtual drives. I’ve only seen controllers that detect physical drives. So, I think, the answer is no. Can’t be done. ... Someone, please tell me if I’m wrong.

If you are concerned with speed why not just get a SSD? I don’t see how the minimal performance gain could be worth the pain.

And… What redundancy would you gain from this type of mirroring? If either drive failed, you would loose your mirror.

@johnpowell Why not SSD. Right now, $$$.

@UScitizen I don’t believe that is so. You would still have one intact 500 MD partition, wouldn’t you? Drive 1—500 MB of data and 500 MB striped. Drive 2—500 MB of data and 500 MB striped.

The problem is that if something gets hosed it is mirrored to the other drive or partition. RAID isn’t a back-up.

Based on the feedback here, I was able to refine my Google search and zero in on the specs for the RAID controller on my motherboard. It uses Intel Matrix Storage RAID technology based on the Intel P35 chipset. THe P35 southbridge manages RAID, but does not allow use of virtual drives as discrete drives. RAID-10 does what I want, but is only supported on my MB with 4 discrete drives.

Thanks to all who contributed to my being able to zero in on this. I will just do RAID-1 and have a full terabyte of mirrored, backed-up data. Such is life.