Hard Drive Config Advice

Keltik THC · 10 May 2009 at 13:02

hi guys,

quickly running out of space on both external and internal HDDs so im thinking about buying some new ones.

anyway, just wondered if anyone could give me some advice on what the best setup would be.

i have 3 HDD spaces in my case, and i already have a 300gb Raptor in one of those.

i was thinking of buying a 2TB drive to back up all my pics/home movies/music etc.. (something like the Western Digitals OcUK has http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-272-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279) because all those files are all on an extrernal HD that im worried if it dies, i loose everything.

I was also thinking of buying another 300GB raptor to give me more space for my games etc.. as im starting to run low on space for my immediate system.

is it possible to have the two 300gb Raptors set up in RAID 0 and have the data backed up to the 2TB drive?

im thinking RAID 0 will give me the performance i require and i would set Acronis to backup the 600gb raptors all the time to the 2TB drive, so that would be the safeguard if one of the Raptors fails...

is this possible?

is there a better way of setting this up?

thanks for any advice.

miniyazz · 10 May 2009 at 14:33

I think you might have to reinstall the OS to set up a new RAID 0 array, but you might be able to image before setting it up and copy onto the new array after.
The 2TB drives are v pricey for the capacity. I'd recommend going for the Seagate 1.5TBs (as you can tell by my sig

)
If you're really short of space, look into getting a 5.25 to 3.5" adapter, if you've got any spare DVD bays - you can use one of those.

CaseyChaos · 10 May 2009 at 16:46

Yeah as miniyazz said you will probably have to image the OS using NortonGhost or something and then format and set up the raid, once that's done you can't plant the image onto there.
The 2TB are pricey indeed but once you have 600GB gone from the backup, is the 900GB left on a 1.5TB going to be enough for all your media etc?

Keltik THC · 11 May 2009 at 17:16

thanks for the info so far guys, you are right... the price for another Raptor and 2TB drive is about the same price it would cost me to build a server with a handful of 500gb drives... that would give me heaps of space for backing up my data would obviously be handy as a server aswell, then i suppose i could hold off upgrading my gaming rig...

hmm.. decisions, decisions...