Week 14: Muddy - Raid Drives

This weeks lectures were entirely based on web lectures, so we had no readings from the book to support what one was reading. Although the lecture did go through Raid drives it almost made it more confusing. After searching the internet, I came across this website: http://library.creativecow.net/articles/lindeboom_ron/how_raid_works.php. This website was a HUGE help in understanding how Raid drives worked, it provided the information on a more clear and easy to understand basis. It went into the basics of how arrays, raid drives and striping work and are utilized in a computer or network environment.

The website defines a raid drive an array as:

In a RAID system -- which stands for: Redundant Array of Independent Disks -- you can combine multiple single drives into a shared system wherein each drive carries only a part of the overall load. This allows a user to combine multiple lower throughput drives (like low-cost IDE drives) into a system that looks like a single drive to your system and has a total throughput high enough to handle video, etc. This is known as an "array" of drives."

After reading the article I am more confident in my understanding of how a RAID system works. I believe the RAID system was one of the more difficult concepts that was covered this semester. Now that I know the benefits of using a RAID system, I will be looking into incorporating one into my computer.