Raid 0 for Better PerformanceEveryone is always looking for an edge, even in computing. If you have more than one hard drive on your system you can use the most basic RAID level, RAID 0, to improve storage performance significantly. RAID 0, also known as "striping," breaks files into chunks and saves the chunks across two or more disks. It is popular on desktop systems and servers because it can considerably increase the speed of disk operations. The maximum theoretical speedup isn't 100 percent because of the overhead associated with the operation, but it should be at least 50 percent and can be a lot more, depending on the configuration and whether you use hardware or software RAID. NOTE: As with any array, we recommend that you use exactly the same model of drive for each disk in the array. That means that if you plan to use two, three, four or more disks in an array, you'll need an equal number of identical disks. Keep in mind that unlike the other RAID levels, RAID 0 provides no data protection. You are just as vulnerable to failures as if you were using a single disk. For protection from drive problems you can use other RAID levels, such as RAID 5 or RAID 10, which combine data protection with striping at the cost of performance and disk capacity. RAID 0 can be implemented either in hardware with a special disk controller, or in software. The hardware approach is more expensive but it much gives better performance. Implementing RAID requires installing a driver during the set-up process. In Windows XP this can be done using the setup utility during the startup process. You will be asked during the installation procedure if you want to install RAID or SCSI drivers. Hitting F6 will take you into the appropriate menu. Note that you will need to have the RAID driver on a floppy disk in order to install it. If you don't have a floppy on your system, you will need to purchase or borrow a USB floppy drive and plug it into your system's USB port.
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