I wonder if someone can briefly explain what RAID drives are, why get them, what are the benefits for Flight Sim. I have done some research on Wikipedia but it seems to focus on servers, etc. Thanks for the help.Mark.

RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks which you probably already know from Wiki. :)Benefits for FS. Faster load times. Better load speed for photoscenery. What else do you need to know about RAID + FS? You can search (as this is discussed quite often here) if I have not given too great details...Some types of RAID have the added benefit of data redundancy--if one disk in the array should fail, the entire array is not lost--and data can be restored/rebuilt from the surviving disk(s). This is what we have at my company in NAS (network attached storage) devices.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

Hi Mark,like Rhett says:RAID0 ( that I have) uses 2 hard drives as one drive, and sources data from both (both HD's have the same info on them, but the controller reads both concurrently and reads "chunks" of data, so speeding up data reading). You get to define that "chunk" size in setup, and there are articles on this forum that might help you with the best size to define for FS. I chose the default size, which was a bad choice for FSX/FS9, since the data size of the discrete data blocks in FS is small. The downsize is that having 2 HD's both working potentially halves your "mean time between failures" (MTBF), and as you need both drives at all times to run the computer, you have twice the risk of a catastrophic failure.RAID1 is different in that it uses 2 HD's for redundancy, but has no advantage on performance. You can lose one drive, and just continue on the other. Effectively, you have just doubled your MTBF.Other combos include RAID0+1, which combines the best of both of the above options but requires 4 HD's.There are some very good articles on the web. You will need to totally re-install your OS and all apps to do any of these. Configuring hard drives can be complicated, I would advise you to carefully read all the literature that you can before proceding, plus ensure that your motherboard has a RAID controller included (and if it does, the manual should have a section on setting it up).Bruce.

Thanks for the explanations. Another piece of info for me to consider as I get closer to a computer upgrade.regards,Mark.