SATA Hard Drive Setup Ideas need help, with a rant.

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I need help with my first SATA hard drive setup. I have room in my Tower for four hard drives. Three internal and one would be in a Mobile Rack. I wanted to set up the OS on the smallest drive like 74GB 10k RPM. Then put all my programs on the next larger drive about 320GB 7200 RPM. Next a 500GB or 750GB drive that would storage .mp3s, videos, photos. The Mobile Rack would be a back up for the storage drive and would be the same size.

Could I have the storage drive in a RAID 1 configuration with the Mobile Rack drive?

I wanted to have the OS separate from my programs so I could reinstall the OS if needed without having to reinstall all of my programs. Could this work? Would I have to reinstall some of the programs?

Other then saving the shortcuts to all of the programs, like by copping Documents and Settings folder, what else would I have to save so I could reinstall the OS and have it work correctly with my programs that would be on a separate drive?

I think trying this I would have problems. Wouldn't I need to backup the system or system32 folder so I would have all the files (like .dlls) to use my programs? Or backing up the WINDOWS folder? How would I restore that folder?

Would it be a better idea just to ghost two drives? One would be the OS with programs and the other would be storage. That set up would be two 320GB and two 500GB drives.


What would be the best program to back up each drive? I don't want the backup drive of the OS to be used as a duel boot OS. Would I be able to save multiple OS setups and be able to restore them when ever I wanted? My OS drive now is about 30GB with a few programs installed. Would the back up of this drive just be 30GB?

With ghosting, I would just need three drives. OS with programs drive would be 320GB, the storage drive would be 500GB and the third would be 750GB to store all the back ups.

I don't like the RAID setup yet. I make changes to the OS ever so often and being able to go back to a cretin point would be helpful. iTunes just missed up my Music folder and I would love to be able to restore it.

Any thoughts would be most helpful.


P.S. Check out callforhelptv.com, dl.tv or diggnation.org if you miss the old TechTV. Is it just me or does that G4 channel suck. A tech channel that shows COPS and CHEATERS. I know its old news that the channel sucks now but I just needed to get it out and I just watched the TechTV's Call For Help: Final Episode on YouTube.

Thanks for your time.
 
let me understand what you are trying to do...

if you are running RAID 1 then your drives are mirroring. You will lose half capacity.

If you meant RAID 0 - then you are striping. You will have full capacity. After setting the drives up in a RAID 0 array, you just need to create partitions after formatting them and installing the OS on the primary partition. Put all your other stuff in other partitions.

Bear in mind, drives of unqual size may lose some capacity when running in RAID array. It is always best to have twin drives when running in a RAID array.

If you got plenty of $, have 4 drives and run them in a RAID 3 or better.

Read up on RAID and pick out what works for you and your set up.
 
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