Thank you all for the responses. Just to put things in perspective, the last time I set up software RAID was on RH6.2 and boot/root RAID was very much a nonstandard thing to do. I never could get it to boot from the second drive, so if the first one went out I would have to boot from a floppy drive that probably hasn't been used in years with a special floppy which is years old as well. (Also the issue of RAID always comes up in LILO vs GRUB flamefests, and that had me nervous. ;-0 ) Obviously things have changed a lot since RH6.2. Good points as to the advantages of software RAID. This machine is fully certified by RedHat, but the CERC 6ch controller is uncertain, so software RAID seems the right choice. Thanks Again, Steve Bergman