actually, the A7V133 appears to have RAID support
 
 
the RAID version gives you the same thing as a RAID card on the board.

Thanks for replying but what does a raid card do?
 
What does RAID mean! What is its functionality and what possible advantage can it give?
 
If you have a website, where I can see its definition and explanation please do send me
 
 
ARC

http://www.promise.com/
 
there is info about RAID there
 
basically, RAID allows a person with 2 hdds to span them (making them 1 large drive-which is great with smaller harddrives), or if the drives are the same size(and model?) STriping them (RAID 0) makes the drives faster...basically all the even bits go on 1 drive, and odd bits go on the other, if I understand correctly.
 
RAID 1 allows backup, both drives are mirror images(in case 1 drive goes bad)
 
RAID 1 0 combines both of these, and requires 4 drives.
 
RAID 5...not sure
 
here's what promise says:
This article offers a quick overview of RAID and RAID terms.
RAID Levels
What is RAID?
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In a standard PC, each hard drive is seen as an independent disk designated by letters like C,D,E, etc… In a RAID system, multiple hard drives are placed into one or more "arrays" of disks. Each array is seen as an independent disk, though that array may include upwards of two, three, four, or more drives. This is why RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. In an IDE RAID array, of course, the drives are low-cost IDE.
 
Promise IDE RAID also uses advanced data handling techniques that takes advantage of the fact that multiple drives are performing the work of a single drive. This includes tagged command queuing/scatter-gather/elevator seek which basically re-orders requests for data depending on their location on the hard drives. This provides more efficient use of the read/write heads, particularly in retrieving data.
 
RAID Levels
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Using RAID arrays inside a PC offers much greater flexibility, depending on application usage. Different RAID levels perform different functions.
 
RAID 0 (known as "striping") basically links each drive in the array as one huge drive. Storage capacity is determined by the smallest drive in the array. That capacity is then applied to format all other drives in the array. If using a 4GB, 6GB, 5GB drive in a RAID 0 array, your system will see one huge drive of 12GB (4GB x 3) versus 15GB. RAID 0 offers double or more performance under sustained data transfers when one drive per IDE port is used. In such a configuration, unlike SCSI, IDE drives are always available to the system. SCSI requires more management of the SCSI bus.
 
Spanning: If a user wishes to obtain all the capacity of the drives in an array, he may also choose to "span" the drives. Unfortunately, there are no other benefits except capacity with the spanning solution.
 
RAID 1 (known as "mirroring") makes and maintains an identical image of data from one drive to a second drive or from multiple drives to a second set of multiple drives. Should one drive fail, the working drive or drive set continues operating. To the system, such an array is still seen as a single drive letter. While RAID 1 is the least efficient use of hard drives to provide data protection (since the user does not see any of the additional storage capacity of the mirrored drives), low-cost IDE makes it acceptable. If performing 1-to-1 mirroring with two 4GB drives, the system only sees one 4GB drive. IDE RAID 1 represents a significantly lower cost than SCSI RAID 1.
 
RAID 5 uses a mathematical expression that compares data from two drives and calculates a third piece of data called "parity". Should one of the drives fail, parity data can be used to rebuild the failed data. Under RAID 5, parity data is stored across all drives in the array. This maximizes the amount of storage capacity available from all drives in the array while still providing data redundancy.
 
 
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My PC is warm. I think our fire wall is acting up.