what is raid and do i need it?

[Kottre]

what is raid? The k7t266 pro2 comes with or without raid. do i need raid for $30.00 more?

 

[cvlegion]

RAID- redundant array of independent disks (or the latest perversion: redundant array of inexpensive disks)

RAID 0-striping- alternates data between drives thereby doubling effective throughput (theoretically)
RAID 1-mirroring- two copies of data for fault tolerance

These are the only RAID schemes that you will be concerned with on this board. You have to go for much more expensive RAID cards to get more schemes. I have a PERC 3 SCSI RAID controller which is $800 but it has its own processor and memory.

Do you need it?
I don't know. You have to decide it. $30 will not get you a RAID. You will need 2 drives of the same type (preferably). This will get you much faster transfer rates on sequential transfers. You will need to be transferring really big files to notice a huge difference. Transferring small files will be about the same as one drive because the bottle neck is access times of the drives. That is not cured by RAID.