Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks or RAID is used mostly in servers for their fault tolerance and performance. Unless you run a home-office where the data you keep in your computer is invaluable or irreplacable, you don’t need to use RAID. But this option is becoming more popular with the consumer because of the speed increase and/or data reliability you achieve when you set one up. All you need usually is 2 or more hard disks and a RAID capable motherboard or a RAID card and you’re on your way to better speeds than individual drives can deliver. There are 3 most common levels of RAID: 0,1 and 0+1 that home pc buyers will find. RAID 0 provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disks) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance. RAID 0 is used to gain maximum speed when data reliability isn’t an issue (if you are building or buying a gaming pc) and a minimum of 2 hard disks are required. RAID 1 provides data mirrorring (a technique in which data is written to two duplicate disks simultaneously) but no performance and requires a minimum of 2 drives. Unfortunately, the transfer rate per block is equal to that of a single hard disk (great for mission-critical applications). This level is usually used where data needs to be accessible at all times. RAID 0+1 combines the data striping of RAID 0 with the data mirroring for RAID 1 allowing excellent performance with good…