PC Stats have a new beginners guide out for installing a RAID array on your PC and what performance you can expect from it, and a quick explanation of what 'RAID' actually means.
It's an unfortunate fact that hard disk drives are rather slow at storing and retrieving data. Sure they are faster than CDs, linear backup tapes and other removable media, but compared to actual computer memory, they lag behind massively. The mechanical nature of hard disk technology will always hold it back when compared to a purely electronic storage devices such as a stick of RAM. The thing is, our reliance on hard drives has if anything increased over the years, while the technology they are based on has changed little. Modern software requires ever-increasing amounts of disk space and free memory, leading to constant hard drive access both to retrieve data from the program directory and to store data in the 'virtual memory' space that Windows puts aside on the hard drive.
Hard drives are faster in terms of transferring data than they used to be, mainly do to increases in the speed of the interface (the IDE controller) between the drive and the rest of the computer. Over the course of the last few years, the standard has gone from 33MB/s through 100MB/s and 133MB/s, and now reaches 150MB/s with the new Serial ATA drives.
Installing RAID
It's an unfortunate fact that hard disk drives are rather slow at storing and retrieving data. Sure they are faster than CDs, linear backup tapes and other removable media, but compared to actual computer memory, they lag behind massively. The mechanical nature of hard disk technology will always hold it back when compared to a purely electronic storage devices such as a stick of RAM. The thing is, our reliance on hard drives has if anything increased over the years, while the technology they are based on has changed little. Modern software requires ever-increasing amounts of disk space and free memory, leading to constant hard drive access both to retrieve data from the program directory and to store data in the 'virtual memory' space that Windows puts aside on the hard drive.
Hard drives are faster in terms of transferring data than they used to be, mainly do to increases in the speed of the interface (the IDE controller) between the drive and the rest of the computer. Over the course of the last few years, the standard has gone from 33MB/s through 100MB/s and 133MB/s, and now reaches 150MB/s with the new Serial ATA drives.
Installing RAID
