Although originally intended for use in a server orientated environment, RAID is a commonly used method of storage in home desktop systems these days as well. If you're keen to learn more about its benefits/downfalls, PugetSystems have a nice tidy article up this weekend which explains all the ins and outs of RAID.

The acronym 'RAID' stands for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. It is generally recommended that all disks in a RAID should be identical (or at the very least, the same size and speed). There are several variations designed to meet different needs. Some are for making larger, faster storage solutions. Others trade off size for increased reliability. Yet others try and accomplish both. Here is a rundown of the basic types of RAID available today.

The crew over at Hardware Secrets have also just posted up a fresh article regarding RAID, they take a look at the latest RAID-6 setup and how it weighs up against RAID 0 and RAID 5 configurations.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) systems are used to increase the performance and/or reliability of the hard disk drives of the system. In this article we will explain the basics about RAID0, RAID1, RAID5 and the advantages of RAID6 over them.

There are two basic ideas behind RAID: data stripping (a.k.a. RAID0), used to increase performance, and mirroring (a.k.a. RAID1), used to increase reliability.