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About Your RAID Configuration
If you purchased the optional serial ATA RAID PCI card and RAID configuration, your
computer is already set up and ready for operation. This section provides an overview of the
RAID configuration that you selected when you purchased your computer. Although there
are several RAID configurations available in the computer industry for different types of
uses, Dell offers either RAID level 0 or RAID level 1 on the Dimension XPS computer. A
RAID level 0 configuration is recommended for high-performance gaming, and a RAID
level 1 configuration is recommended for the data integrity requirements for digital
photography and audio.
NOTE: RAID levels do not represent a hierarchy. A RAID level 1 configuration is not inherently
better or worse than a RAID level 0 configuration.
RAID Level 0
RAID level 0 uses a storage technique known as "data striping" to provide a high data access
rate. Data striping is a method of writing consecutive segments, or stripes, of data
sequentially across the physical drives to create a large virtual drive. Data striping allows one
of the drives to read data while the other drive is searching for and reading the next block.
Another advantage of a RAID level 0 configuration is that it utilizes the full capacities of
the drives. If you have two 120-GB drives installed, you have 240 GB on which to store data.
NOTICE: Because RAID level 0 provides no data redundancy, if one drive fails, then the data
on the other drive is also inaccessible. Therefore, ensure that you perform regular backups when
you use a RAID level 0 configuration.
24
Using Yo ur Computer
serial ATA RAID PCI card
configured for RAID level 0
segment 1
segment 3
segment 5
hard drive
segment 2
segment 4
segment 6
hard drive
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