RAID is an acronym meaning 'Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks'. It
allows you to set up an array of hard drives that the computer sees as
one single drive. The advantage to RAID is twofold, but primarily for
speed. If you can write(and read) your data in parallel across multiple
drives, then the data thru-put rate is increased. It also can be used
as a redundant data storage, where your data is mirrored across drives
(multiple copies). There are several different combinations of data
'striping' or redundancy that you can use. I recommend you spend a
little time reading about RAID online. There is a plethora of
information available to those who look.
I am extremely pleased with my system. It used two 80 GB drives in
parallel to form one 160 GB drive, and the speed is VERY fast. The disk
access time is noticeably improved over a single drive.
There is a very good article available in PDF format entitled "RAID:
High-Performance, Reliable Secondary Storage" by Peter M. Chen, Edward
K. Lee, Garth A. Gibson, Randy H. Katz, and David A. Patterson. Do a
google search for it if you are interested in reading it. It is quite
an in-depth publication.
Hope this helps
Norm
| im thinking of buying a new motherboard and i noticed
| that some have on board raid and some did not.So i was
| wondering what was on board raid and is it really
| important to have?
