I was thinking of trying this function. Have heard that using Raid is a good way to prevent loss of data. Is this true and are there more positive/negative reasons to (not)use Raid?

raid can only prevent data loss when configured in certain arrays. to learn more see my post on raid arrays here

RAID hu well it can be better yes. I build arrays for our server and there are lots of apps. there are 4 basic step ups that we use.
1 mirror - you need two "identical" drives" and a contoller card. If one drive fails the 2nd one still works and you just replace the 1st drive and everything is great. This will not give you any more speed or data storage but it will protect data.
2 - Stripe you need two "identical" drives" and a contoller card
when a file is saved half of it goes to each drive. This will increase perfomance and data storage but if one drive fail your done also in order to have max speed you say ATA100 drives will need a PCI card that can go faster then 33 MHz becasue at 32 bits @ 33 MHz gives you 133 MB per sec transfer so you will be riped off of the 200 MB per sec you could get.
So make sure you card can do 66 and that you borad will support it.
3 RAID 5 Gives you speed and data storage but you will need at least 3 drives but 4 is better. A bit of each files is written to each drive but it is overlapped so if one drives fail there are enough of the peices to rebuild the file. This is what we use the most in servers. Now beacuse of how it works having a $300 to $400 controller card is important for speed. The card has to have a good CPU and RAM on it to run fast. Also the only really good card that we have used are 64 bit 66 0r 100 MHz card (the bit PCI cards) and most desktop board don't have those kind of PCIs
4 - RAID 1+0 Striping and Mirroring this is the fast type of RAID. 2 of you drives are in a stripe and the other tow are a mirror of the 1st. The only draw back is that you don't get as much storage from this step up as RAID 5.

So if this is a lot of info I am sorry I don't know how else to expain. If you have a simple server or desktop I would say just use to good IDE drives such as the Western Digtial 80 or 120 or bigger JB drives. these are the ones that have the 8 Meg Cache and the are cheep like $70 a drive. I would also use a Promise card, they work fine and are cheep and the step up is very easy. Also a mirror would be the cheepest way of protecting you data, you can get more speed but using the WD drives and you can have more storage but getting a bigger drive.

Another thought would be say if you got a new board like the Intel D875 it has onboard RAID 1 (mirroing) or RAID 0 (striping) but it uses a Serial drive. And I am an Intel dealer (I know you guys are thing ABit rules but we make workstations so we need stable boards with a 3 year w) and I know that the RIAD works at 66 MHz so it will be faster then IDE. You can get the Serial drives in 80 120 and up that are 7200 RPMs (just like the new IDE drives) but if you really want fast get the 74 GB "Raptor" drives these are great. They are 10,000 RPM SATA drives and have a seek time of 4.5 NS and they are on sale at newegg for 200 a drive (with a $50) mail in rebate)

And there is of couse SCIS drives but they are $$$$ fr most normal apps like a desktop PC the fastest SCIS is 15,000 RPMs and is made by Seagate but is will cost you about $800 for the 74 and a good Adpatec contoller card is about $400 to $500 so you can see with 4 of these drives and the card plus a board that will support 64 / 66_100 MHz is not cheep

if you have any questions let me know and I hope that I have given you some useful info and not just confusted the &^%$ out of you Steve

I have a thing on my mobo that allows for some sort of RAID, but I've been afraid to touch it...