For a HOME systems backups are critical for Raid 0 configurations. They are not as critical for Raid 1 configurations, since the data is backed up continuously "on the fly." There are things that are more important than performance. One of these is fault-tolerance or "Up-TIme". If a primary disk in a Raid 0 configuration fails, you will have "Down-Time" and data loss. If a primary disk in a Raid 1 configuration fails, you will still be able to use your system with no data loss. You better do something about the bad disk, though. No one has ever shown me a Poser benchmark that shows that significant performance gains can be attributed to a Raid 0 configuration. Benchmarks done by Anandtech and Storage Review indicate that there is no "real-world" gain in performance. Performance is limited by PCI Bus Bandwidth. PCI-Express may be a solution, but right now it's only for Video Cards. For starters, try disabling services you don't need. For exampel, if you don't share your files and printer, then disable Server Service and NetBios Helper. I wonder if the AntiVirus package makes a difference. I'm using McAfee. What are you using. Maybe I'll try some renders with it disabled.