IDE Raid?

[deadman_uk]

I have 2 IDE Hard drives, one is 160gb, one is 40gb.

Anyway In my BIOS, it says

IDE Raid = Disabled


What is raid? and should it be enabled?

 

[FunkStar]

Raid is used for linking drives together in a variety of different ways to gain better performance or data integrity. For the drives your own you dont have anything gain by using it so just leave it disabled.

 

[TheMostWantedPolishTwin]

here's a good article covering all kinds of RAID levels there are...
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/single.htm

edit: in your case setting up a raid array wouldn't be a good idea since you'd lost allot of storage space..

 

[Rustynuts]

Haha, you would end up with only two 40-gig raid drives for 80 total! I've seen a lot of articles lately stating that RAID 0 doesn't really do anything for speed anyway, so unless you want RAID 1 (backup mirror) then just keep two separate drives.

 

[djnes]

Aside from all the arguments that RAID0 is worthless (which is pretty much a fact anyway that some have refused to accept), your situation definitely doesn't lend itself to RAID for the reasons others have said.