lou, it does help. I need the added drive to use the raid utility. I run a gigabyet dual bios motherboard with Athlon 64 chip. The system does just fine and is fast enough for me. Raid utility is one I have considered but won't know if I "need it" unless I try it! I don't like the idea of having to plow through apps which might not work smoothly. This is for the future..perhaps or perhaps not. Thanks again. BYW, I got the scratch disc thing worked out without needing extreme measures. Your sum advice here did help. Tom.