It's been a while, need to build a new system.

[staatsof]

Ok so I haven't dabbled in building a new system for myself since 1998. I've upgraded a couple of things like the processor, disks etc. but now I need to start over. I can clearly see that things have changed, a whole lot.

I'm not into gaming but I do take a lot of digital pictures and I'll also be doing some videos from my race car adventures. After barely surviving one disk crash 2 years ago I think this time I'm finally going to go the RAID route and the minimal mirroring option so that I never have to recover a hard drive again. I'm also looking for a better backup solution this time.

I need some help pointing me towards a motherboard that has a lot of the stuff I need on the board. Perhaps the Raid controller should be seperate but I'm not going to go for Raid 5 for my workstation so maybe an on-board solution is good enough?

I can provide more details as to what I need. I've built about half a dozen systems for my self and hundreds for work over the years but I retired from the IT industry in 2000.

Is anyone willing to have a discussion with me about this?

Thanks Bob S.

 

[staatsof]

I've done some investigation about Raid and XP.

Question, can I even use Raid with XP professional ??

 

[kwarkers]

I would be willing to have a discussion with you about that, but i dont know much about RAID. But I have always found the best way to come up to date with the latest info os to buy the annual buyers guide mags. And this time a year is wen they start comin out. Pick one up and they usually have a good deal of info for "beginners". Good luck with ur system

 

[staatsof]

Thanks for the offer.

I really need to figure out if RAID 1 can work and whether I'm willing to put up with the consequences so I think I'll focus on that first.

This time around data integrity and back up methods are going to be my primary focus.

I'm currently using Windows 2000 Professional and I may stay with that or go to XP. I'm not crazy about the installation restrictions of XP.

I'm thinking of implementing a simple 2 disk (80gb each) Raid 1 setup but I'm wondering if that's even possible unless the system disk is not a part of the raid system?

I'm also concerned about making recovery (non disk crashes) more complex than it already is.

I had a complete hard drive failure 2 years ago and paid $1500 to get the data back which I did. Never again!

I currently have two partitions on a single drive with all of my data and apps on the second partition. I guess I could have a third drive just for the op sys and do a RAID 1 with the others.

From what I can gather so far this would mean that these drives would be spinning 24/7/365. That's noisey and draws a lot of power.

Can someone suggest another solution along the following lines:

I could live with a day's lost data. So if I could get an automated drive to drive copy periodically and an automated "changed" data backup daily.

I'd also be willing to have a seperate op sys disk if necessary.


Ideas ???????

Thanks Bob S.

 

[staatsof]

bump

 

[Jhhnn]

I think you'll do better to repost in general hardware. Many modern motherboards have their own built in software based sata raid controllers, and are apparently pretty easy to use, either for storage volumes or boot drives.

Like this-

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1741140&enterthread=y

I suspect that using the search function will bring up more threads, too...

You can also buy automatic attached backup devices and software, google up "automatic backup nas".

 

[professor1942]

I like to back my stuff up on an external USB drive, but that of course is not automated... I don't feel comfortable having all my critical data in one case, even if it is on two separate drives.

 

[SolMiester]

XP support all RAID config's, many new boards now have on-board RAID controllers supporting 0,1 0+1, dont think there are many that do 5. With the XP install, like 2000, u will have to create your RAID partitions 1st before XP will ID them for formatting. MAxtor has a great USB 2 external hard drive with built in automation backup proceedures.

PM me if I can be of any further help
Greg

 

[staatsof]

Thanks guys for replying but I've moved this thread to here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1764362&enterthread=y