more athlon 64 computer questions

[Wes Newell]

Dell (uk) has started to offer raid 0 or raid 1 as standard now on most of
their new 9100 systems
although i have no idea myself which is better

Well, they are 2 different raid setups, so better would depend on what you
wanted. 0 is striping, and 1 is mirroring. 0 splits the data between 2
drives which basically increases performance and combines the 2 drives
storage space so that 2 40gig drives would effectively give you 1 80gig.
If either drive fails, you lose everything. 1 writes the same data to both
drives thus creatling a mirror or automatic backup. Write performance is
slower than standard by a very small amount normally. Read should be a
little faster than normal. If either drive fails, you still have an
operational system. But now your total file system is only 40gig, the size
of one drive. Personally, I'd never run raid 0 alone. You can combine them
with 0+1 with enough drives.