Stuck on what to do

I have a relatively old sata2 hitachi deskstar 500gb, and a fresh seagate barracuda 320gb. I also managed to snipe one of the C300 64gb shell shockers today. So with those 3 hard drives, what would be the best layout for a completely fresh windows copy? Windows/as many programs as possible on the SSD then raid1 for the other two? If I won't notice ANY real benefit to using raid1, I was thinking I would use raid0 for the extra data protection. I guess I just don't really know what to do here. I don't NEED the redundancy in a raid0, but if I won't see any benefit aside from more storage from no raid or raid1, I figure I may as well.

Anyone read this WoT and come up with any suggestions?

**Edit** Currently I'm only using the Hitachi, with about 200gb used up, so if you were wondering as far as layout/short stroking options, there ya go!

I would use the SSD for the OS and programs, the 500 GB drive for files that don't need to be accessed quickly (My Documents, media, etc) and the 320 GB for backups.

You also have your RAID levels incorrect. RAID 0 is striping and has no redundancy. RAID 1 is mirroring of the drives.

Zzzz, thanks man, any easy way to set up a backup? Or just do it manually?

And if you're still nearby, any cases you have laying around you may want to sell?

You could use a program, batch file or do it manually. If you are looking for a program, Acronis is good. You could even use the built in one, if you want.

I don't have extra drives.

Drives!=Cases last time I checked!

You can't seriously solicit buying or selling here outside the classifieds, just a heads up on our rules. Once you get 100 posts, you'll have earned your classifieds access though.

I would do what Thiddy suggested.

For backups, I only backup important documents - I use dropbox for that. The other things I want to backup I just copy over to a second drive every so often, I'm not too worried about losing other stuff.

Haha, it's only half serious >.>
And thanks for the heads up!

Can't wait for the C300 to get here, with a sataIII interface I wonder how fast i can get it to boot

I've never thought RAID 1 was worth it. If you end up accidentally deleting a file or making a catastrophic mistake, WHAMMY, you've just lost that data on BOTH drives! RAID 1 is only good for protecting you from data failure, and since neither of your HDD's are especially fast or even the same capacity, it would be worth using them just as storage rather than RAID 0.

If you want to test out RAID 1, Windows 7 Disk Management has built-in efficient mirroring, easily as good as hardware RAID. Don't bother with Acronis unless you're just a software junky.

Best way of backing up is simply copying your files to the other drives whenever you need to. If you don't like poking around and choosing your files each time, you could make a new library in Windows 7 and copy that over every once in a while. Backup software is a waste of space and resources.

The only benefit I would see from RAID1 would be that if one drive goes, the other one has the EXACT same programs and registries in it right? Therefore if one drive goes, I wouldn't have to reinstall the programs that wouldn't fit on the SSD right?

And any thought about a RAID0?

ZRock said:

The only benefit I would see from RAID1 would be that if one drive goes, the other one has the EXACT same programs and registries in it right? Therefore if one drive goes, I wouldn't have to reinstall the programs that wouldn't fit on the SSD right?

And any thought about a RAID0?

Click to expand...

Windows 7 mirroring is software RAID 1, which I prefer to hardware, so you could try that. It does take a little while for your data to copy itself over though; leave a chunk of your day open.

As for RAID 0, performance wouldn't really be there for those drives and, of course, you'd lose all redundancy. It's not worth it.

ZRock said:

The only benefit I would see from RAID1 would be that if one drive goes, the other one has the EXACT same programs and registries in it right? Therefore if one drive goes, I wouldn't have to reinstall the programs that wouldn't fit on the SSD right?

Click to expand...

Correct.

Doing RAID with different make/model/size drives is sub-optimal. Not only would you lose space between the drives, you'd be waiting for the slower of the two. You can do it, but it doesn't make sense. If you are going to do RAID, buy drives specifically for that purpose. This is why I didn't suggest it in my first response.

Haha, I wish I had the money to just "buy drives specifically for that purpose". I hate being broke. But it sounds like mass storage+ssd boot is where its at, thanks all!