Questions about Hard Drive Setup

[FirestormX]

I have a few questions reguarding hard drives:

My new motherboard will have onboard eide/sata raid and I was looking into my options. Currently I have Dual 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Western Digital EIDE Caviars which is what I plan on starting with. However, neither came with a ATA Ultra card that I would need if they were above 137GB. If I raid them (0 i think) to form a 240, will my onboard raid controller take care of the barrier or will windows still start rewriting data once it reaches 137GB? Also, my friend told me Raid does not allow multiple partitions...I don't see how this could be true, is it? How would you guys as Pros recommend I partition them (if you can partition raid)? Would it be a smart or a dumb thing to have a seperate partition for program installs, if windows crashed on its seperate partition would they still run or have errors because the new install of windows wouldnt have the registry entries? And finally, at some point down the line I'll probably upgrade to SATA once they get faster/cheaper, would I just be able to copy everything (including windows/appz installs) off my Dual 120s onto the new SATA drive(s) and run them as primary? Or would there be some kind of error caused by doing this. I dont partiuarly enjoy reinstalling everything so I thought that might work...

Lot of questions actually...but any answers would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[quadcells]

Hi,
Since hard drives are so fast today, why do you want to put your OS on a RAID "0" array?
If one drive fails you lose everything.
Use one as an OS/apps drive and the second for data/ video/ audio/ pics.
Just my two cents.
I hope I understood what you are trying to do.

 

[chocoruacal]

You don't need RAID Keep things simple....keep them separate. But if you insist....yes, you can have partitions on an array. The OS will see it as one big hard drive, you can chop it up however you like. You shouldn't experience any problems with 2x120=240.

 

[FirestormX]

Alright, anyone know any other answers?

 

[LordMaul]

....free bump for you.

Help him out guys, I referred him here because I couldn't give him the help he needed.

 

[Sheriff]

RAID allows multiple Partitions and most Gig limits have a work around with Bios Flashing or programs. I use a small partition for the OS/Programs and throw my storage stuffs on the other. I do this for speed in defraging as it is not neccessary to split them up for benefit. I have used seperate partitions for OS and Programs but it is cumbersome when installing making sure the data goes to the proper Parts. Check the FAQ section and I believe it explains most things you are asking.

 

[Sideswipe001]

You would most likely have to reinstall all the programs after the OS crashed. Installing them to a seperate partitino will NOT save the registry entries (as you noted). BUT the raw data would be saved. For example...Photoshop would need to be reinstalled, but the photos that you've editied with it would still be there (assuming you kept them on the seperate partition as well).