text: in computer animation not affiliated with a studio, is a r.a.i.d. system absolutely necessary?   well, raid systems are good for a few things and all have their stengths in the particular configuration.   1. redundentcy: if you want to have a relaiable hardware system to avoid data loss through hard-drive failure, use a raid 1, 5, 1+0 (mirrored then striped) or 0+1 (striped then mirrored)  2. read / write: when you stirpe a hard-drive (make two or more hard-drives join together as one) you actually double the read/write speed.. so a 15k rpm drive becomes 30k with a second hard-drive of equal speed.  use raid 0 for read/write spped.   3. mass storage: prety much any raid other then 1 (mirrored drives) will give you more storage room..   so now ask yourself the following questions;  though you are not affiliated with a studio, do you need the read/write speed for fast render farms?  do you need expendable storage? do you need a large storage space for your work?   i would say that if you don't have a very high-volume render farm, a raid 5 can be an all-round robust and flexible solution for you.  you will gain read/write speed with the proper raid card, and get the best storage and redundancy for the buck!   good luck!   - eyal.