[sclug] "Adding RAID" - what does that mean nowadays? I thought PCI bus was really slow

[M.Blackmore]

Someone in an earlier thread mentioned adding RAID as being a major
value-added increment he gave to computers he made up for clients, as
this speeded up the disk access bottleneck.

Now, as I've said in another posting, I'm really out of date since
retiring in 2002 with ill health and a real big surprise baby for
geriatric parents to become full time housedad. The only "raid" I've
added to machine for our home use has been to ancient Pnetium class kit
from the mid 90s we use as home nfs/samba servers, and that has just
been the addition of a cheapo SATA PCI bus card and addition of some
320gb sata disks, software raided rather than using hardware raid cards.

The PCI bus is, if I recall correctly, slow - about 290mbs/sec?? - but
for light home use by at most 4 or 5 users over a 100mbs network or a
wireless network such speed limitations make little difference.

So if one is "adding raid" and seeing a major performance boost, that
indicates to me that this raid is not being added over the old PCI bus.

Is there a new high speed data bus that has come into existence I know
nothing about?

As I've said in another post just a moment ago, any guidance for
"catching up" literature for modern hardware would be gratefully
received, I don't know where to start, and am stuck in a 2002 knowledge
timewarp!