The controller is onboard. RAID0 is somewhat faster than a single drive, but there are risks: if either drive fails, you lose the entire array, so your chances of data loss double vs. those chances with a single drive.

The RAID array must be set up in the BIOS and you must load drivers before the XP installation begins.

Note too that data recovery from a RAID 0 array is more difficult than it is with a single drive.

I think what most of us point out is with two drives carring the data, you have a 100% better chance of loosing your data.   A failure on 1 of the 2 will cause the whole RAID array to be lost, which basically looks like one Parition to the system. 

I look at it this way:  say you've got 2 hard drives.  Now let's say they're not in RAID0 or RAID1.  Your chances of losing your data are pegged to whatever drive your data is on, failing.  If the drive with your important data fails, you're sitting at 100% chance of failure.  And if it never fails, you're at 0%.  If you're in RAID0, you're at roughly the same odds, only if one drive fails, you're automatically at 100% failure, and never at 0%.

If you want safety, order it configured in RAID1.  This will be one drive mirrors the other, with a minor loss of perfromance over non-RAID drive performance.  If one drive fails, you've still got a copy.  Unless you accidentally reinitialize the wrong drive, in which case you're at 100% failure rate once again.  The Dell 925X-based boards support a 3rd HD serving as a "hot spare", which will rebuild the RAID1 set automatically if one of the 2 RAIDed drives fail.  (It would be great if they would support RAID5 but they don't)

You can also configure "Matrix RAID" which I've never fooled with, but basically makes part of the 2-drive array RAID1, part RAID0.

See http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_harddrive&message.id=79021#M79021

My solution has been to perform image backups of my RAID0 array to a 3rd drive, using Acronis True Image version 8.0.  The initial image took 9 minutes to complete, and incremental images performed weekly take less than 2 minutes.  If my RAID fails, I can replace the faulty drive, then boot to a bootable CD that the Acronis program created, and very quickly restore the image file to the repaired array.

 

Thanks for a fast reply...my older hard drive is not a SATA.  Want the 74 GB WD Raptor to be my primary drive.

I too am purchasing a Gen 4 with 74 GB Western Digital Internal SATA Raptor HD.  Want to add my 120GB WD eide drive as second HD for storage only.  Is this possible?

Sure, it's possible.  There are 4 SATA connectors on the motherboard.

jspero,

Oh, yeah.  You got the fast reply because I didn't read very carefully, and missed the EIDE designation.  The gen3/4 have one IDE channel, with 2 connectors.  If you have only one optical drive, then you can use the extra connector.  You'll have to find an adaptor to let you mount the HD in a 5 1/4" drive bay, or find an IDE cable with enough reach to connect to the drive mounted in the 3 1/2" bay.

I like  the external/firewire concept, and you're correct to go with firewire versus USB 2.0

If you find your firewire speeds a bit slow, check this article and patch out:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice again.  So there is no conflict, if I can connect them onto the motherboard (one optical drive, one hard drive).  You can have a SATA drive and EIDE drive connected, and they will be looked as two separate drives?

The other way I think I would go would be to purchase two SATA HDs and have them work independently.  Don't want to use a RAID arrangement, I think the increase in performance in using the WD Raptor will be fine.  And I don't want to take a risk of losing data.

SATA drives can be installed and run independently, correct...Thanks again