Software RAID
A RAID system that can be configured and its setup can be done using an operating system. These are generally low in performance than the hardware RAID controllers, which is due to the lack of a dedicated hardware. They are also very much easier to set up and much more flexible in terms of disk use than hardware based system in the case of Windows XP Professional.
As in most of the hard drive and storage options, RAID too is managed through Windows XP's Disk Management tool, which can be accessed as:
Right click My Computer on desktop >> Select Manage from the popup menu to bring up the Computer Management window >> Select Disk Management to view the disk details.
Windows XP Professional is capable of creating only RAID level 0 - striped arrays, while the other Windows Server operating systems are capable of creating software RAID level 1 - mirror arrays. We will discuss about various RAID levels as we go ahead in this tutorial.
