Dell 400 owner manual Hyper-Threading, About Your RAID Configuration, RAID Level 0 Configuration

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Hyper-Threading

Hyper-Threading is an Intel® technology that can enhance overall computer performance by allowing one physical processor to function as two logical processors, capable of performing certain tasks simultaneously. It is recommended that you use the Microsoft® Windows® XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later operating system because Windows XP is optimized to take advantage of Hyper-Threading technology. While many programs can benefit from Hyper-Threading, some programs have not been optimized for Hyper-Threading and may require an update from the software manufacturer. Contact the software manufacturer for updates and information about using Hyper-Threading with your software.

To determine if your computer is using Hyper-Threading technology:

1Click the Start button, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.

2Click Hardware and click Device Manager.

3In the Device Manager window, click the plus (+) sign next to Processors. If Hyper-Threading is enabled, the processor is listed twice.

You can enable or disable Hyper-Threading through system setup. For more information on accessing system setup, see page 116. For more information on Hyper-Threading, search the Knowledge Base on the Dell Support website at support.dell.com.

About Your RAID Configuration

This section provides an overview of the RAID configuration that you might have selected when you purchased your computer. Although several RAID configurations are available, Dell offers either a RAID level 0 configuration or a RAID level 1 configuration. A RAID level 0 configuration is recommended for high-performance gaming, and a RAID level 1 configuration is recommended for the data integrity requirements of digital photography and audio.

The Intel® RAID controller on your computer can only create a RAID level 0 configuration using two or three physical drives. If a third drive is present, then that drive can be made part of a RAID level 0 configuration using the Intel RAID configuration program, or it can be used as a spare drive in a RAID level 1 configuration (see "Creating a Spare Hard Drive" on page 36). The drives should be the same size in order to ensure that the larger drive does not contain unallocated (and therefore unusable) space.

NOTE: RAID levels do not represent a hierarchy. A RAID level 1 configuration is not inherently better or worse than a RAID level 0 configuration.

RAID Level 0 Configuration

A RAID level 0 configuration uses a storage technique known as "data striping" to provide a high data access rate. Data striping is a method of writing consecutive segments, or stripes, of data sequentially across the physical drives to create a large virtual drive. Data striping allows one of the drives to read data while the other drive is searching for and reading the next block.

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