RAID is implemented using a RAID controller on the motherboard or on a RAID controller card. RAID is enabled in the BIOS.
Hardware will be RAID PCIe / PCIx RAID hardware controller but The hardware RAID is often the motherboard RAID controller or a separate RAID card.
Some of the best Sata Raid Controller brands include LSI, High Point, Areca, Adaptec, and Intel. These products can be bought online on New Egg and other electronics retailers.
It's a device that manages the physical hard drives installed into you computer. Since it's very common when used in hardware RAID, it is often called a RAID controller.
Depends on the raid controller. Windows 7 includes a awefull lot of drivers, so it probably will just work without reinstalling the drivers.
Check with your motherboard manual (if it has onboard RAID), or check with your RAID controller's manual to see if it supports setting up single drives and not having a raid configuration.
Brief introduction about Hardware RAIDThe hardware-based system manages the RAID subsystem independently from the host and presents to the host only a single disk per RAID array.An example of a Hardware RAID device would be one that connects to a SCSI controller and presents the RAID arrays as a single SCSI drive. An external RAID system moves all RAID handling "intelligence" into a controller located in the external disk subsystem. The whole subsystem is connected to the host via a normal SCSI controller and appears to the host as a single disk.RAID controllers also come in the form of cards that act like a SCSI controller to the operating system but handle all of the actual drive communications themselves. In these cases, you plug the drives into the RAID controller just like you would a SCSI controller, but then you add them to the RAID controller's configuration, and the operating system never knows the difference.Brief introduction about Software RAIDSoftware RAID implements the various RAID levels in the kernel disk (block device) code. It offers the cheapest possible solution, as expensive disk controller cards or hot-swap chassis are not required. Software RAID also works with cheaper IDE disks as well as SCSI disks. With today's fast CPUs, Software RAID performance can excel against Hardware RAID.Difference between hardware raid and software raidObviously, hardware RAID is pricier compared to software RAID, due to the extra hardware that you need to purchase. The hardware is typically expensive, and adds a substantial amount to the cost of the whole system.On the flip side, the cheap software RAID can impair the host computer, which may result in poor performance. This is because it needs to process the data before it is written to disk, to determine where each piece of data should go.The controller in a hardware RAID handles these operations, so that the host processor does not have to. The host processor will simply write the data, just like in a normal hard drive.Tips: The performance hit taken by the system can vary a lot, depending on what type of RAID array you have in use. It could be very minimal, as with the case of a JBOD array. Or it can be quite substantial, especially with stripping and mirroring on multiple disks.Hardware RAID offers better reliability compared to software RAID. A software RAID can be prone to data corruption, due to the fault of the RAID software or driver that is being used. A software RAID can also be affected if the host computer is heavily loaded. Heavy processing can cause some pieces of data to be delayed by a small amount of time. These delays can add up, and negate the benefits of the RAID array to some degree.
The F6 key.
checkers and cards
YES
Name says major difference between both. by the way Software RAID is created using feature provided by Operating System or any special software, but Hardware RAID is created using Hardware RAID controller Card. When you create RAID you are adding overheads to read and write operations. If you create software RAID and your server is too busy or you have many read and write operations you will see there is impact on performance. When you create HARDWARE RAID you will use dedicated controller with processor and some cache. This will not create overhead for your OS and you will find better performance. Software RAID will save some money for you but Hardware RAID will provide you value addition.
I believe this is the on board Raid controller version of an Intel chipset.