A free service rounding up the week's news, articles, tips and reviews. Internet News Internet Investing Internet Technology Windows Internet Tech. RAID, Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a feature that is not available straight out of the box. It is often found in servers and workstations, but was, until just recently, not viable for most others, as it was restricted to SCSI harddisks. Rather, RAID is a protocol, or system of using multiple SCSI and now also IDE harddisks.
RAID uses additional harddisks to improve performance, add reliability, or both at once.
Of course, a large part of making RAID affordable lies not only in reducing the cost of the controller itself, but also in making it compatible with cheaper IDE harddisks. SCSI RAID controllers have been available for quite some time, but most users cannot afford a single SCSI drive, let alone the multiple SCSI harddisks needed for a RAID configuration. Reprints Copyright INT Media Group, Incorporated All Rights Reserved.