Do only servers benifit from raid 0 config, or would a box used mostly for gaming be able to utilize this technology? Does it mess anything up, or limit anything the the normal IDE set up would not for a normal home comp, or work station? Just wondering if I should bother with this or not? Also, I read the drives have to be the same, but I also read for riad 0 they have to be new, is this true, or will formattted ones, with then deleted partitions suffice? Thanks :)

RAID comes in various configurations various facilities offered. See: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html All RAID 0 does is split data between two disk speeding up disk access but providing no redundancy. On some configurations drives have to be the same size. Disk do nat have to be new, but they have to be reformatted and probably re-parttioned as well, consequently all data will be lost. Read the various descriptions of the different RAID formats, then decide. Incedently you would not use RAID 0 on a server. To risky. One disk in the array fails and you lose everything. Of course you must have a RAID Controller to implement RAID. The standard IDE interfaces will not work. Stuart

I have done the research, and raid 0 seems liek the only one that would interest me simply for the speed increase, but would this benifit games, or all applications in general? If so, how much? Is it substancial or hardly noticable? I have a Asus P4P800 deluxe, so the raid is there. thanks.

The speed increase is substantial. It would benefit gaming and all programs. Most in particular. Load times and access times would have a perceived speed increase. If you want increased smootheness once in game play the opt for a high end video card and 8 meg cache on the Harddrive verses the standard 2 meg cache.

I have a ATI AIW 9800 pro and 8meg 120 WD hdd, so I should be good there, just wondering if buying another 120 hdd, and setting up raid 0 would realy be worth it.

Hello, RAID (or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk Drives) is another way to improve speed and protect data from loss. Until the past couple of years, when someone referred to a RAID array, they were almost surely referring to a SCSI drive setup with multiple hardrives. But now-a-days, several companies are offering IDE (or ATA and SATA) RAID hard drive controllers. The cost and capabilities of these controllers vary from vendor to vendor, and option to option, so picking the right one is a toughie. You need to decide what you want to obtain with your system. RAID offers several options/advantages over standard ATA or SATA controllers like those that come installed on most motherboards. RAID Levels 0 and 0+1 are the most common. You can add RAID Level 5 but the cards get more expensive. RAID 5 is great if you want to make sure your data is well protected from loss and speed isn’t a huge concern. RAID 5 requires at least 3 drives. RAID 0 does offer speed, but no additional data protection from loss and RAID 0+1 offers speed and protection. Both 0 and 0+1 require redundant equal sized drives and provide less useable data space. Basically, for each data drive, you have an equal sized spare drive on which the data is mirrored so both drives look identical. Consequently, if you have two 120 GB Drives, you still only have a total of 120 GBs to work with because the drives are exact copies of each other. This allows multiple reads and writes to and from both drives, thus allowing much improved performance. Another cool thing is that under RAID LEVEL 0 + 1, if one of the mirrored drives fails, the other drive has a copy of the data so no loss occurs and the system continues to operate. On some systems running RAID 0+1 or RAID 5, the data from the bad drive can be rebuilt, “On the fly” by simply installing a replacement drive and allowing the good drive to rebuild it. Very cool. The below WEB page offers some RAID info. http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html There are others too. Just do a search for RAID on Google or some other search engine. The bottom line, you get what you pay for. The AVERAGE home PC user doesn't need RAID, but gamers are unique and may enjoy the benefit if they're willing to pay for the added costs. Hope this helps. Good Luck