Using RAID can improve performance or security of data and data transfer on any computer (that has drives that support). RAID is a system for sharing or duplicating data among various harddisks. Depending on which level one sets RAID up a person can get increased data integrity, fault-tolerence, and/or capactity than single disk drives. RAID also makes the computer see multiple drives as one logical drive. RAID is typically used on servers, either to provide more efficiency or to backup all data. The most common levels of RAID are 0 and 1.

RAID 0: This level is usually set up to increase performance. Since it spreads the writing onto 2 or more disks, the writing speed is faster and each drive has to write less. It also combines all the drives. The thing with RAID 0 (and many other levels of RAID) is that if you have a 100 gb harddrive and a 120gb harddrive, the computer will see them as one 200 gb harddrive, not 220. This is because in order for RAID to function, it makes the drives equal. This level is not redundant

RAID 1:RAID 1 creates an exact copy (mirror) of all data writen to one disk onto 2 more or disks. This is commonly used on servers as a form of backing data up. Therefore anything written or deleted on 1 harddrive will be deleted/written on another. RAID 1 also increases performance even though you lose the use of the other harddrives. Since the computer provides sectors when looking to run a program, the search is split among the various harddrives, cutting seek times in half. To get the full redundancy benifits, use independent disk controllers (1 for each disk).

Those are some basics on RAID. Another thing is, most SATA drives are RAID ready, and I am not sure if IDE or PATA drives are able to run RAID.

Definitely IDE drives can and are used in RAID configurations. The ability to be part of a RAID configuration is not dependent on the type of hard drive. It is dependent on the controller and the accompanying software.

There are a number of companies who make IDE RAID controllers. A company named Promise Technology was one of the first, if not the very first, and now of course there are others including Adaptec, Iwill and Highpoint.

Promise was making IDE RAID controllers back when IDE drives were still running at ATA66 and I believe that at that time you could only have RAID 0 or RAID 1. Now of course you can have up ro RAID 5.

Quite a few of these IDE RAID manufacturers also offer hot swap RAID canisters.

thanks for adding that moogie, i didn't know about IDE drives.

There are many other RAID types too.

Check out at Wikiopedia and Webopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_arr...dependent_disks
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html

why would SATA hard disk drive must install raid driver if installing windows xp?

because for some reason... raid isnt approved by something... i forget... id have to check my mobo bookelt to see what company it is... im not sure but i do know that its not approved by a certain company... i dont really know why though...
and for raid... u need two of the same HD?

Raid is a bug spray.

Nah. Just kidding. Raid is a type of server is i'm not mistaken.

You do not need 2 of the same harddrive. It treats all harddrives the same. So you can't make a 120gb drive out of a 90, so if you ahve a 120 and a 90, it treats them both like 90's. But it would be smarter to get 2 identical drives, atleast in size.

I think what you mean is the controller driver. Installing the controller driver does not actually mean installing RAID, there are many types of RAID controller available and nowadays chipset itself do have RAID controllers in them.