new to raid and partitioning

[Dermen]

Right now I have a Hitatchi 80GB sata drive and in a few weeks I will be getting another because I need more space. I read all about raid 0 and how its faster so I figure I will set it up that way. Now I read you can have different stripe sizes and I'm wondering what would be the best size. My computer is mostly used for gaming.

The 2nd thing I would like to know about is partitioning. I read that you can have your windows install on a seperate partion so that you don't lose all your data if you have to reinstall windows. How large should this windows partition be? Also what else can partitioning be used for?

[Sophisticated]

even if u make a partition and if the HD fails u will loose windows because its on the same HD still...now if u have 2 sata HD's in raid and u have a seperate HD for windows then thats good.....about the strip size u should go with 32k or 64k...preferrably 64k

[Andyman902042]

Remember you will lose all the data on your current 80gig if you add it to a raid 0 array. For the windows partition I'd play it safe and choose 5GB. All the updates and some programs need to install things into the windows folder and that can take up a lot of space. Remember with raid 0 if one drive fails you lost everything stored on the array.

[Dermen]

I know I will lose everything on my 80 gig when I set up raid. I will be transfering my data to my 2 other computers before I set up the raid. I know if 1 drive fails then I lose everything. The reason I was asking about the windows partition is because I like to reinstall windows once a year. And if I could do that without losing all of my data because its a on a different partion, that would be great.