Hi, I never used RAID before but read a little about it. Thanks!

Hi Tanner9 and welcome to LQ.

No you do not require a PCI card to setup RAID.

What Linux distribution are you running or planning to use with this?

pclinuxos. For desktop use and not a server.

Is there a way to create redundancy without raid?

Should be fine. I was struggling with asking "what references have you read?" because thinking, they aren't that helpful.

Perhaps it's better to explore what more specific questions you have about setting that up. Because the topic of RAID is very large and one can just use a BOD (Bunch Of Disks) or go all the way over to a RAID server of some category. In your case, you don't appear to be purchasing a turnkey RAID setup to use, but instead you wish to arrange some disks and would like to give yourself a similar capability, but using a model where you set it up using equipment you already have, or less expensive equipment than purchasing a server. Correct?

EDIT: Appears we overlapped with your additional question about redundancy. A. I believe so and that people use rsync and similar tools to do this. They set up parallel disks and then find and set up software to perform the backups automatically.

OK, I'll do more research. Probably might try software raid. Much appreciated rtmistler

Read the Linux RAID wiki here.

Much appreciated syg00