RAID is an acronym of the phrase Redundant Array of Independent Disks which is basically a disk subsystem used for the increase in performance, to provide fault tolerance or a combination of both in the computer. Raid is used with the help of two or more disks and a raid disk controller. So now you may wonder what is Raid0. Well Raid0 is the lowest designated level of raid and is not considered a valid type of raid. Raid0 performance is great, but Raid0 is slow and it has no fault tolerance and if a disk fails, all related data is lost.

Unlike other raid applications, Raid0 recovery is absent in Raid0. In Raid0 data recovery is absent as Raid0 uses a minimum of two disks where it writes data to both drives in alternating fashion. This is called striping where you have 10 chunks of data to be written on the disks, chunks 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 are written on the first drive while chunks 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are written on the second disk, in sequential order.

With this splitting of data across the drives the speed of the single hard drive is increased. However as all the data is not available on any single disk, failure of one drive and the absence of recovery data from Raid0 leads to complete loss of data on that drive. Raid0 setup is best for people who need quick access to large files and need high performance in the boards like in gaming systems. Unlike other raid applications, in Raid0, its capacity is the sum of the memory of both the drives.

Raid0 uses striping for the writing of data across numerous drives at a time. This is why Raid0 strip size is large and used where the data stored is off little value, but has importance in performance. One advantage of Raid0 is that Ghost and Raid0 are compatible with each other. It is thus possible to use Ghost with Raid0.

The internet offers you information on how to set up Raid0. It is also possible to ask your computer store for information on how to install Raid0. You will find that mounting Raid0 on Windows is rather easy. Since data recovery is non-existent, you can also buy the Raid0 disc recovery software to enable recovery of data if and when it gets lost. It is possible to use SATA cables to connect an external drive to desktop where the extra drive is mirrored with the internal drive to give added performance and protection equivalent to Raid1 coverage. However, you will find that Intel Sata Raid0 is slow. The final decision is yours.