More attentive users may have noticed that for some time several
new models of motherboard have been turning up on the market
with a new feature called RAID, meaning Redundant Array of
Independent Disks. But what does this mean in practical terms
and how can this feature be of use to normal users? The RAID
system consists of a set of two or more hard disks, with two
basic purposes: provide a faster disk system (i. e., speed up
disk data loading) through a technique called data stripping -
or RAID 0 - and/or set up a safer disk system by means of a
technique known as mirroring or RAID 1. These two techniques may
be used either separately or jointly. Lets have a look at data
stripping first. Picture a computer equipped with two equal hard
disks. In a run of the mill machine – without RAID – each disk
is accessed independently from the other. With data stripping,
the pair of hard disks will make up a single set, leading the
computer to believe that it is dealing with a single, larger
disk. If each disk has a 20