Raid-0 Partition or whole drive(s)?

[balin]

I'm about to install two new Seagate 7200.8 SATA drives and I'm wondering if my proposed setup is possible. My question is:

* Can I make just one 25gig RAID-0 partition for my swap file and Photoshop temp file, while partitioning the rest of the drives as single, non-RAID partitions? * I don't want RAID-0 for anything but large Photoshop work.

My goal is this, but I don't know if it's possible:

Two SATA Seagates:
drive1[ c:\ XP-32 no raid 10G][ z:\ Swap, Temp, and PS RAID-0 40G][non-raid parts.][ e:\documents RAID-1 5G]
drive2[ d:\ XP-64 no raid 10G][ z:\ Swap, Temp, and PS RAID-0 40G][non-raid parts.][ e:\documents RAID-1 5G]

Other drives:
raptor [ g:\ games][ p:\ programs]
IDE [storage][whatever]

These are my details:

2X Seagate 7200.8 SATA 250g
1 WD Raptor SATA 74g
1 Seagate IDE 100g

2 Onboard SATA controllers w/ VIA RAID
2 Onboard SATA controllers w/ Promise RAID
(Asus A8V Deluxe)


Thanks very much. I've looked pretty hard, but all I can seem to find is what RAID is, which I already know, just not if it can be divided up this way.

 

[Kenazo]

What your mobo's RAID controller will do when you set up a RAID 0 array is combine the two drives into one big massive 500GB drive. How you partition after that is up to you. You can't only combine portions of the drives, and why would you want to? My recommendation would bet to run everything off the RAID-0 setup and use the WD Raptor as your page file. That's where you need the real speed anyway, and probably htat one hdd will be quite a bit faster than your RAID0 array anyway.

 

[balin]

Originally posted by: Kenazo
...You can't only combine portions of the drives, and why would you want to? My recommendation would bet to run everything off the RAID-0 setup and use the WD Raptor as your page file. That's where you need the real speed anyway, and probably htat one hdd will be quite a bit faster than your RAID0 array anyway.

I basically wanted it for data security. I want the RAID-0 speed for big Photoshop work, but I don't want to compromise the rest of the data (450 megs worth) by putting it on RAID-0.

So if it's All RAID or nothing, then I'll take your advice and just put my swaps/pages on the raptor - but I won't RAID anything.

Thanks

PS What about setting up partial stripes or mirrors from the XP disk management utility instead of onboard?