dmorison - 12:54 pm on Aug 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

I am offered the choice between SATA and RAID for hard drives

This doesn't really make sense; because SATA (Serial ATA) is a hard disk interface technology; whereas RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a software or hardware controlled mechanism for storing data across multiple hard drives such that the failure of any one of them does not result in the loss of data.

Ergo you can use RAID with SATA hard drives..!

Try the Wikipedia definitions of both:

[en.wikipedia.org...]

[en.wikipedia.org...]

I think the decision you are being asked to make is simply whether you wish to have RAID or not; your supplier is just confusing the issue - probably because they do not supply SATA RAID controllers, and you would therefore get the older standard IDE or SCSI hard drives if you choose to go with RAID.