RAID : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

RAID comes in several levels: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 0+1. For home use, you are probably only interested in levels 0 (speed) or 1 (safety).

RAID is usually handled transparently by a hardware RAID controller. The software thinks it is talking to a single disk. Software-only RAID is a rather dangerous feature to use in Win2K.

• It’s probably the least-used feature of Win2K, so it’s not well tested.
• The OS (Operating System) must be running for it to work; if it’s not, you are dead in the water. You may not be able to reinstall the OS without reformatting, in which case you will lose all your data.

RAID comes in several levels:

For home use, you are probably only interested in levels 0 (speed) or 1 (safety).

With a SATA (Serial ATA) drive, you need a SATA-capable, RAID-capable motherboard or add-on PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) SATA controller. You can also use SATA on a single disk without RAID. SATA drives are pretty well standard now. Of course, for RAID, you have the added expense of twice as many drives.