About Raid Configurations; Raid Level 1 Configuration - Dell Vostro 200 Owner's Manual

About RAID Configurations

This section provides an overview of the RAID configuration that you might
have selected when you purchased your computer. Although several RAID
configurations are available, Dell offers only RAID level 1 for its Vostro
computers. A RAID level 1 configuration is recommended for the data
integrity requirements of digital photography and audio.
The Intel RAID controller on your computer can only create a RAID volume
using two physical drives. If a third drive is present, then that drive cannot be
made part of a RAID volume using the Intel RAID configuration program,
although it can be used as a spare drive in a RAID 1 configuration. However, if
four drives are present in your computer, then each pair of drives can be made
into a RAID level 1 volume. The drives should be the same size in order to
ensure that the larger drive does not contain unallocated (and therefore
unusable) space.

RAID Level 1 Configuration

RAID level 1 uses a data-redundancy storage technique known as "mirroring."
When data is written to the primary drive, it is then duplicated, or mirrored,
on the other drive. A RAID level 1 configuration sacrifices high data access
rates for its data redundancy advantages.
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Setting Up and Using Your Computer
serial ATA RAID
configured for
RAID level 1
segment 1
segment 2
segment 3
segment 4
segment 5
segment 6
hard drive 1
segment 1 duplicated
segment 2 duplicated
segment 3 duplicated
segment 4 duplicated
segment 5 duplicated
segment 6 duplicated
hard drive 2