My understanding is that the major drawback with the "FakeRAID" controllers integrated onto motherboards is that you have no method of moving your disks from one computer to another unless you're moving to another motherboard that has the same integrated controller. With the Linux software RAID, you are able to move the disks to another computer with different hardware. For some, this could be the deciding factor between using the integrated RAID controller or Linux software RAID. The other drawback (again from my understanding) is that the FakeRAID type controllers are offloading most of the RAID tasks to the system CPU, just as software RAID would. Real RAID controllers do most of this on the controller without going to the CPU. I've run a handful of systems using Linux software RAID and I haven't noticed any performance hits. On a newer system (Intel Core Duo 2 something or other...) I've also run Windows Software RAID on the same hardware. Again I didn't notice any performance hit. -- Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us IT Outhouse Blog Thing | http://www.itouthouse.com