Before you buy components, spend a few minutes planning your upgrade. If you'll be leaving your current ATA drive in the system, make sure your PC has open 3.5-inch drive bays for two more hard drives. You'll also need an open PCI slot for the controller. To ensure optimal performance from your RAID configuration, buy identical drives.
Make sure you have the room before you get started. This project requires two 3.5-inch bays and a PCI slot.
Next, decide how to configure your RAID array. We chose a Level 0 array, which boosts drive performance by interleaving data across multiple drives, a technique called data striping. Inexpensive RAID controllers should also support RAID 1, which protects against catastrophic drive failure by automatically mirroring the contents of your primary drive to a second drive.Back up your current hard drive before you start upgrading, if only to prepare against accidental overwriting.
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