[Nottingham] whats the deal with SATA / RAID ?

[chris stones]

SATA and RAID.
ive got my eye on some Motherboards that also happen to support RAID and 
SATA.

I know raid can be used to make 2 or more identicle hard disks act as 
one, so if one fails, your data is not destroyed.
however are there any other uses for RAID ? also, they give 
specifications like RAID0 / RAID1 / RAID(insert number here)
whats this all mean ?

Also, what is SATA ? can i plug the normal (E)IDE hard drive onto SATA ?
ive read it improves disk performance, but i can find no explanation as 
oto how ?

thanks alot guys.