On 04/05/11 13:30, Drew wrote:

It seemed logical to me that if two disks had the same data and we
were reading an arbitrary amount of data, why couldn't we split the
read across both disks? That way we get the benefits of pulling from
multiple disks in the read case while accepting the penalty of a write
being as slow as the slowest disk..

I would have thought as you'd be skipping alternate "stripes" on each 
disk you minimise the benefit of a readahead buffer and get subjected to 
seek and rotational latency on both disks. Overall you're benefit would 
be slim to immeasurable. Now on SSD's I could see it providing some 
extra oomph as you suffer none of the mechanical latency penalties.