[tbeatty]

Software raid is about 10% so hardware raid is going to be more than that. Considering that you can get 2 drives for abou the same price as 1 that is twice as large, I'd go for it.

But I'd recommend getting 3 drives and use the striping/parity raid option so that you get both incresaed speed and reliability.

[Oschisms]

You're right, RAID 5 is best, but my ABIT P III RAID motherboard only supports RAID 0, 1, 1+0, and Span (JBOD)I hope he has more options than that, but if their Athlon mboards are similar, then those are the options he's got as well.