Advice for SATA configuration (RAID 0, JBOD)

[iikii]

Next week I will have following new hardware:

3 x Hitachi SATA 250 GB
2 x Hitachi SATA 400 GB
1 x PLEXTOR-SATA DVD+-R/RW 12 X/4 X/16 X

I am completely new to SATA drives and RAID configuration.

There are 4 SATA connectors on the A8N-E. How should I connect 6 SATA drives?

What RAID configuration and partition type should I use for building a media center of a backed up DVD and CD collection (mpeg4 - mp3 format)? (RAID 0, JBOD??)

What if I want to run both Windows XP Pro x64 and Gentoo? Will I be able to?

many thanks for any given advice.

my system is:

ASUS A8N-E
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
1024MB PC400 DDR-RAM Dualchannel
Geforce 7800GTX
Windows XP Pro x64

 

[Tu13erhead]

You'll need to buy some sort of SATA controller card to get all those drives running.

You probably won't need to use RAID 0 if you're using the drives for multimedia storage. If one drive dies, EVERYTHING on the stripe is lost.

You _should_ be able to run x64, but no guarantees. I had some issues with my Audigy.

Anywho, I gotta run..

 

[imported_Tick]

Get a raid 5 controller, put the 3 250 drives in RAID 5 for important data, put the other drives on mobo, maybe JBOD the 400's for convenience.