How I use software RAID on Windows to speed up drive access and add redundancy

RAID or Redundant Array of Independent Disks combines multiple disks into a single storage pool that the operating system views as a single drive. While enterprise systems use hardware RAID with a dedicated RAID controller for better performance and more reliability, the average consumer can make use of software RAID on Windows to boost performance and introduce some data redundancy. This is what I did when I found out about Storage Spaces on Windows.