What is Raid/Serial ATA

[kangshi17]

Hi can anyone please tell me what raid is compared to Serial ATA. My motherboard supports both but I'm not sure how each one compares 2 each other. And also how do i find out if my hard drive supports raid?

 

[LV38_Eagle]

sATA is just a higher speed, lower power usage, way of transferring data from the Hard drive to the rest of the system, you will need sATA compatible drives, but it is faster than IDE.

Raid is a method of using more than 1 HD in parallel to improve data transfer speeds. Basically, half of each file is copied to a separate HD. It is not really worth using a Raid array in a standard desktop machine, as it makes seek times a little longer, even though data transfer is faster. Editing large video clips, or large image manipulation might make it worthwhile though.

 

[Zero Signal]

There are different types of RAID as well. The RAID config mentioned above is RAID 0 also referred to as Striping. In this Config the 2 HD's will work as one. You dont have to have SATA HD's to be able to RAID. There is also IDE RAID, but your MOBO must have this function. The other type of common RAID is RAID 1 also referred to as Mirroring. This like the name suggest copies a file for example to both HD's identically. Meaning if one HD fries on you...you have a duplicate. Note RAID 1 is not as fast as RAID 0 config.

Also of note..SATA HD's at this time arent offering much more speed than ATA133...so FYI if money is an object.