Well, there are several advantages to using RAID (Redundant Array of
Individual Disk
Drives) The two most common are Stripping, and Mirroring! Stripping allows
you to add more than one drive to the adapter, and create one large disk
from the connected drives for performance. If say for an example, you create
an array that consists of 2 40 gig drives, they could be connected together
to create an array that would be 80 gigs in size, and show as one drive such
as C: and then the 2 drives could read and write to both at the same time.
This is a huge performance gain!! Adding even more drives will be even
faster! But if one disk in the array crashes, the whole array will be gone!
The second type will allow for mirroring, where each of the disks in the
array, will be written exactly! This allows a real time advantage for
backing up of data! Should one drive crash, there will always be an exact
copy on the second drive! And there are combinations of this available as
well. Say you use 4 drives 2 are stripped, and 2 are mirrored, this would
allow for performance as well as a secure backup of you data! The adapter
you use will determine many of the options you want!! For more info, check
for more info than you can stand  :-)
http://www.raid-advisory.com/rabguide.html

Good luck,   steve....

-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Richard F. Bolha
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 9:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] RAID ??


Could someone please explain the advantage of RAID? In addition
to a UltraATA-100 or new Ultra-133? SCSI? What are the
advantage for a home unit? A business workstation? A business file
server? Articles regarding this subject?

Thanks
Richard Bolha

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