New Raid 0 Setup

[j9darkwing]

Hello all. Let me tell you my plan and get some opinions and suggestions.
First let's start with what I have. . .

AMD 4400+ 64 X2 (oc to 2.4ghz)
Asus a8n32 sli deluxe motherboard
2 gigs of Corsair 3500 pro ram (oc to 433mhz)
1 BFG 7800 GTX 256meg
1 320gig Western Digital hd with 3 partitions. One partition for winXP pro, one for Vista beta 32bit and one for vista beta 64 bit.
1 200gig Maxtor. Non partitioned, used for data storage.

I have two 74 gig WD Raptor hard drives on the way and I plan to raid 0 them together, partition the array and install the aforementioned operating systems.

Once I complete this task I will format the 320 gig hd and use it for storage, install all my games to the new XP Pro os and then ghost each new partition of the raid array to a storage folder.

I realize that by putting my os and games on the raid array I will be at risk of losing my os but as I tend to format and reinstall or reghost my rig about every 6 months or so I'm not too worried about currupting the array and losing my os. (As long as no physical damage occurs)

Any suggestions, tips, advice? Am I wasting my time and money? Well, obviously I am as I'm tossing money away on a gaming machine but I mean beyond that. lol

This will be my first raid setup.

Thanks

 

[j9darkwing]

I've read the other raid posts and have come to the conclusion that since I'm going to be putting an os on the array I'll most likely go with 256k stripping and leave the block size at default 4kb. I'm still considering increasing it to half of the strip size.

 

[Tedster]

I'd keep the cluster size large. Partitioning the RAID into 2 equal partitions is a good idea. You can backup the primary to the secondary. It's always good to backup to an unraided third drive if using RAID 0. I've had a RAID 0 set up for a year now with no issues.