Can someone explain about Raid, I have Mobo that is IDE and SATA compatable and it mentions Raid, also when I did clean install of Win XP it asked if I wanted to install raid. What exacally is it. :-?

There are lots of different types of RAID.
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. There are serveral different levels of RAID. Some of the most popular are RAID-1, RAID-0, and RAID-5.
RAID-0 distributes the data across 2 hard disks, which basically means that your computer can write data twice as fast as before, but RAID-0 is not redundant (if one drive crashes you've lost half your stuff).
RAID-1 is mirroring, so you write your data to 2 harddrives, so if one fails you always have the second one. RAID-1 isnt bad, but isnt exactly the most practical.
RAID-5 is my personal favorite, and takes at least 3 disks. If you have three 80GB disks in a RAID-5, you will have 160GB total space with the last 80GB disk being the backup. I can't explain how RAID-5 works, since it is the newest to me, but I prefer it as it gives you the most storage space and is also redundant. It is also said to be faster than RAID-1.

More information can be found here.

Hope I helped,

I don't know about TDD but i found that very informative Alex. It's something i often wondered about but never got round to investigating.

Thanks :thumbs:

Thank you so much, now I know I don't need to load Raid, I only have one IDE drive not the 4 SATA drives this Mobo can take. These things are getting so clever you need to be a rocket scientist to understand them. Now I'm no rocket scientist but you explained so clearly that even I could understand. :heart: