Can someone explain what RAID is?

In particular what is a RAID-0 stripe volume? Or the term RAID in general.

Thank you fellow Mac users.

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks - as opposed to JBOD Just a Bunch of Disks.
RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
TL ; DR - RAID is a method to store data across multiple disks - with the number corresponding to some physical and logical arrangement of the disks.

RAID 0 - is a speed setup where data is stored across two different disks. This allows faster access as the data is "striped" across multiple disks. There is no redundancy and if a disk fails you loose everything. For 2 500GB drives - you have 1TB of data available in RAID 0.

So you would not suggest a Raid-0?

Raid0 is ok but you must remember that there is no redundancy so regular backups are important.
There is also some question over how much quicker (if anything) the read/write functions are in RAID0. I have had a laptop for the last 5 years which runs in RAID0 and although I disabled raid a couple of years ago I didn't have any problems while running raid.
There are software raid setups and there are hardware raid setups - the latter being more reliable, or so I read, though my setup was a software raid.
Personally I chose to disable the raid and not take the chance as I couldn't detect any difference in speed anyway. But as I say, that was on a laptop, not a multi-terrabyte database, where things could be very different.

I have a 13 inch MBP (early 2011) i have an OWC 120 gb SSD (6g), and i am thinking about getting a data doubler from OWC and putting another SSD into it to make a RAID-0. My question is can i use an intel instead of the OWC? assuming they are the same size. and will the optical drive bay be able to support another 120gb 6g SSD? sorry about all the questions i just wanna get it right before i spend the money

RAID levels are dependent on what you are trying to do - and speed of R/W of disks has many factors - not just RAID levels. To ask if someone would recommend RAID 0 - is like asking would you recommend a Sports Car. The answer is - that depends - what are you going to do?

All RAID levels trade off between cost, redundancy, number of disks and speed. RAID 0 is all about R/W speed and no redundancy - but sometimes that is what you need - like a scratch disk for HD video/audio editing. You need speed - not data security. If I were storing my most precious pictures that I ever took - I wouldn't store them on a RAID 0 array because if 1 disk goes - the whole thing goes.

I don't know about the drive and the bay as I'm new to Macs myself, but I would think so.
The 2 drives in a raid array should be the same size (or you'll just get 2 x the smaller drive).
Not sure if you'll notice any difference in speed though.
Maybe wait for someone with more Mac experience to come along - or do a search on the opti bay.

Happy New Year!

Thank you MacDuck! happy new year!!

I will do some more research and i hope someone who has better input on those questions will come along.

thank you as well Ivan, i have a whole backup on an external 320gb Seagate HDD (the original drive) so I'm not worried about losing my data. Speed is crucial to me thats how i came across the RAID-0 setup. I have seen that read and write times are doubled at upwards of 800-900 mb/s which is more than double of what my single SSD can do.

I think you'll find that speeds go up by a maximum of 30%. There are other factors that come in to it than just reading from/writing to 2 discs simultaneously.

i know this but it is one of the more enjoyable parts of the experience.

I understand

i think for now i am just going to slap 16 gb of RAM in it and call it a worthy upgrade

RAM would be a much more real world performance boost for almost all tasks - probably a better way to spend your money vs a RAID 0 setup for normal operations like running a bunch of programs or web browsing tabs, or running a virtual machine.