Maximum PC did some tests with Raid 0 and found that it didn't help game performance, if that's what you are interested in. Check the Maximum PC web site.

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Raid arrays are either software or hardware based. Most people use hardware. The hardware is a raid adapter either built into the motherboard or an add-on card. All raid adapters that I have ever seen offer a raid bios. You enter that bios with a keystroke at boot. Then you can create and configure your arrays. (well, there are cabinet arrays but that is more enterprise level) It might be that games do not benefit from raid 0. However, in my company we run thousands of raid arrays. They can offer speed improvements depending on a number of factors. A simple perfmon setup would tell how your use is. To answer you question you normally make an array in the array's bios. The OS sees the array as a drive normally. See the documents that came with the array. You'll know if it doesn't work right away. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

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Forget what everyone else said above. You should definitely go with RAID-0. Here are just a few of the great benefits of RAID-0. 1. Doubles your chance of a drive failure. Not only that, but if you do have a failure it will be completely unrecoverable (as opposed to a single drive where you might be able to get some data off it). 2. Gain a staggering 1% increase in load times for games (maybe). If you are really fast at clicking the "join" button you might be able to get in the game before someone with a single drive setup. And, that's only if you are RAIDing Raptors, otherwise a single Raptor will be faster. 3. Even better, you can get performance increases of up to 50%. Now that's nothing to sneeze at! Oh, but wait, that's only in synthetic tests and have absolutely no bearing on "real" performance. And then there are just all the other fun things such as incompatibility with some imaging/backup software. But, you don't need to do backups (See #1 above). I have said many times, in a home desktop environment about the only reason to run a RAID0 setup would be as a scratch disc for video authoring. And, that is assuming you have a separate single drive(s) for your OS, programs and data. Of, course you may try it and never have any problems. But, you should ask yourself, is it worth it to totally loose everything on my system? Good luck. You'll need it. Michael J

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Don't know where the Game word came from. Here is the good thing. You have a clean system to setup. Try it both ways. Use xp's built in performance monitor to see your gain or loss. I can say for sure that ftp, web, and high end graphic systems can benefit. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

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My computer has two RAID-0 arrays up. It's been running non-stop for several years. I set it up this way because I don't care about data loss, and I wanted to squeeze as much performance out of my machine as possible. (Video card and CPU are overclocked to the maximum stable frequency.) If you really want to go through with it, then yes, you need to set up the array first so that you can install the OS onto it. Oh, and if anyone wants to know why I'd put two RAID-0 arrays instead of 1 RAID-0+1 array, two of them are SATA and two are IDE, each controlled by a different chip. That, and I wanted my OS on one array and the page file on the other array. Yes, this computer was meant to squeeze every 0.0005% out.

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