Windows 2000 and Windows XP have the ability to create RAID volumes between multiple hard drives within software.

You may format this and use it as additional storage. You should now see a striped disk in the Computer Management window with the sum capacity of the two areas on the disks that were selected to make the striped array, see the screen capture' There will also remain an area of unallocated space on Disk 1 if the two unused areas did not match in size.

Choose an NTFS file system, select Perform a quick format (to save time) and click Next.

Choose the drive letter to assign to the drive and click Next.

Choose the size of each disk you wish to use for the new striped disk.

Add Disks 0 and Disk 1 to the Selected list.

Select Striped as shown in the screen capture and click Next.

Click Next. A window will appear prompting you to Select the volume you want to create.

Right-click on Disk 0 or Disk 1 and select New Volume….

It will indicate that your disk drives are Dynamic.

Open the Disk Management window again.

Click Yes. You will be prompted that you must restart your computer.

Click Yes. You will receive a message saying File systems on any of the disks to be converted will be dismounted.

In the next window click Convert. You will receive a message that says After you convert these disks to dynamic, you will not be able to start other installed operating systems from any volume on these disks.

Make sure that both Disk 0 and Disk 1 are selected in the next dialog and click OK.

In the Computer Management window, right-click on either Disk 0 or Disk 1 and select Convert to Dynamic Disk….

Right-click on Disk 1 and select Initialize Disk.

Select Disk 1 by left-Clicking on the left label.

You should see something similar to the next screen.

Open the navigation tree on the left-hand side to Storage> Disk Management.

Navigate to Start> Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Computer Management.

There are two basic types of RAID configurations, RAID 0 or 'striped' and RAID 1 or 'mirrored'. To create a RAID 0 or striped configuration:

Disk management xp