About RAID Configurations 43About RAID ConfigurationsThis section provides an overview of the RAID configuration you may haveselected when you purchased your computer. There are several RAIDconfigurations available in the computer industry for different types of uses.Your Dell Precicion computer supports RAID level 0, RAID level 1, RAIDlevel 5, or RAID level 10, also known as RAID level 1+0. A RAID level 0configuration is recommended for high-performance programs, and a RAIDlevel 1 configuration is recommended for users that desire a high level of dataintegrity.All drives must be the same type (SAS and SATA drives cannot be mixed in aRAID array) and should also be the same size to ensure that the larger drivedoes not contain unallocated (and therefore unusable) space.The Intel RAID controller on your computer can only create a RAID level 0configuration using two or three physical drives. If a third or fourth drive ispresent, then the drive(s) can be made part of a RAID level 0 configurationusing the Intel RAID configuration program, or the drive(s) can be used as aspare drive in a RAID level 1 configuration (see "Creating a Spare Hard Drive"on page 59).NOTE: RAID levels do not represent a hierarchy. A RAID level 10 configuration isnot inherently better or worse than a RAID level 0 configuration.Using RAID with Hard Drive PasswordsIf you are using the hard drive security option available in System Setup youshould not use a RAID configuration. Using a RAID configuration requiresthat the hard drive password be cleared to allow data access.
