RAID

     Let's talk about RAID for a second just to make sure everyone knows the basics.  First off RAID is an acronym that stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.  Now what we use RAID for depends on what we are trying to achieve.  We can use RAID as a data backup or for performance.

RAID 0

     RAID 0 (Striped) is probably the most common for the performance oriented.  RAID 0 uses two or more drives (preferably of the same size) and makes windows think there is only one big drive.  Now anytime the drive is accessed for reading or writing data, the data is split between all drives speeding up the process quite a bit.  Let me walk you through my setup process for RAID 0.  Both 200GB drives are hooked into my built-in Promise IDE RAID controller on the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard.  We need to build the array through the Promise RAID utility at startup.  CTRL+F during boot-up will get you into the RAID utility.

Both drives are detected, that's a good thing.  Now we can build our RAID 0 array and start experiencing the speed increase.

     Here we get to build our array.  We want to Stripe our drives to increase performance and the block size I've chosen is 64KB.  64KB has given me the best performance, but I encourage you to experiment on your own and see what kind of results you get.  This is the size of the stripes (chunks of data) written to both disks.  There is not a optimal size for everyone.  It depends on the type of programs you use and the performance you want.

Finally the array is set up and windows will see one very large drive, 400GBs.

RAID 1

     You can use 2 or more drives and mirror the information on both drives so if one breaks you don't lose your data.  This is called mirroring.  Let's use the two drives I have for an example.  We will build our RAID array as a RAID 1 array (1 means mirrored).  We will go into our RAID controller BIOS and set the drives to RAID 1 (mirroring).  When windows boots up, it will only see one, 200GB drive.  There is actually two, 200GB drives, but the second one is kind of hidden from you.  It's there and it's getting the same information written to it as a backup.  Now if one of those drives goes bad, you will be able to pull it from the array, swap it with another 200GB drive and rebuild your array without loosing any data.

     Of course there are several other RAID setups, RAID 0 and 1 are the most common.  Whatever you choose, do some research before jumping in.