Dell XPS 420 owner manual About Your RAID Configuration, Changing the Display Settings

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Changing the Display Settings

1After you connect the monitor(s) or TV, turn on the computer.

The Microsoft® Windows® desktop displays on the primary monitor.

2Enable extended desktop mode in the display settings. In extended desktop mode, you can drag objects from one screen to the other, effectively doubling the amount of viewable work space.

About Your RAID Configuration

This section provides an overview of the RAID configuration you may have selected when you purchased your computer. There are several RAID configurations available in the computer industry for different types of uses. Your computer supports RAID level 0 and RAID level 1. A RAID level 0 configuration is recommended for high-performance programs or gaming, and a RAID level 1 configuration is recommended for users who require a high level of data integrity. For example, those in the digital photography and audio industries.

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.

The drives in a RAID configuration should be the same size in order to ensure that the larger drive does not contain unallocated (and therefore unusable) space.

RAID Level 0 Configuration

NOTICE: Because RAID level 0 configurations provide no data redundancy, a failure of one drive results in the loss of all data (the data on the remaining drive is also inaccessible). Therefore, ensure that you perform regular backups when you use a 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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Setting Up and Using Your Computer