Which Drive for OS

[BH2]

Hi Guys,
I am new to the game of building a PC and have been meaning to for the last
2 years, anyway I am getting the bits together, I will use the PC as normal
but want to use it also for making family DVD's etc. So I, got a Capture
card, a Snazzi II AV.DVD EVO. I have also a AMD 64 3500+, Epox Mobo 9NDA3J,
a Radeon Graphics card, 2 x 300Gb SATA I HDD's, also have a IDE 120Gb
HDD(at present in a Zynet Polar caddy). I intend to get 2Gb of ram, not
sure which one to get yet. Now I am told that for efficiency and data
safety the OS needs to be on it's own Drive, so what would be the best way
to set the drives up. Would a Raid setup be advantageous if so which Raid.
Thanks guys I appreciate your advice
Regards
bob

 

[Conor]

Hi Guys,
I am new to the game of building a PC and have been meaning to for the last
2 years, anyway I am getting the bits together, I will use the PC as normal
but want to use it also for making family DVD's etc. So I, got a Capture
card, a Snazzi II AV.DVD EVO. I have also a AMD 64 3500+, Epox Mobo 9NDA3J,
a Radeon Graphics card, 2 x 300Gb SATA I HDD's, also have a IDE 120Gb
HDD(at present in a Zynet Polar caddy). I intend to get 2Gb of ram, not
sure which one to get yet. Now I am told that for efficiency and data
safety the OS needs to be on it's own Drive, so what would be the best way
to set the drives up. Would a Raid setup be advantageous if so which Raid.
Thanks guys I appreciate your advice
Regards
bob

Put the OS on the fastest drive.
The safety argument is quite frankly ludicrous. All it does is make a
format/re-install a bit easier. For safety you should back up to
removable media.

RAID, IMO is not for the home user. It's completely pointless with two
drives and RAID 0/1 which desktop motherboards give, is worse than
useless and you'll see thousands of posts from people who have lost
everything because of problems with a RAID array.

 

[Joe Yong]

I'd agree it's an overkill for many home users but that is likely to shift
as hardware cost continues to drop and software quality + security issues
continue to rise. My current home PC which I built about 4 years ago has 3
drives and with HDD prices where they are today, it is not a big deal having
more than 1 HDD in a PC even for home users.

Any decent SCSI RAID card that provides you RAID 1 (mirror) for about $300
is "not a bad investment" if you can't afford to lose your precious data or
if you don't know enough to do manual recovery. The problem is, most people
opt for RAID 0 (striping) to get better performance which, from my
observation, is mostly a waste of time/money for home users. Your perf gains
will be modest and will probably be lower than if you had gotten better
memory chips.

That said, I am talking about SCSI cards (eg. Adaptec) and not the new
consumer motherboard RAID capabilities. I've never used them so I don't know
what they're good for and how reliable they are. However, that has nothing
to do with the concept of mirroring itself, which is a good thing.

Btw, the data safety thing; what exactly does that mean? Sounds like baloney
to me.


joe.

 

[Jim]

RAID 1 (mirroring) is easily doable for the home user, AND, effective.
Heck, for IDE users, you can pick up a simple, cheap Promise FastTrak100 TX2
off eBay for $25-35 shipped. Cheap insurance. Seems the most common
failure of HDs occurs when you get up one morning and find the HD dead, iow,
no chance to backup the latest changes. Having the assurance that at least
the other HD on your array is functioning gives you the opportunity to
backup that data. No, it doesn't solve the incremental backup need, doesn't
guarantee the other HD might not fail before you replace it on the array,
doesn't mean there's ZERO chance the array itself couldn't be corrupted,
etc., but so what? You take what it gives, there's always the chance
something else could go wrong, but considering how cheap it is, and the fact
that SATA RAID is becoming common place on mobo's, and HDs are dropping in
price all the time, I find it silly NOT to use RAID 1 when available.

Now, to be honest, I keep my OS on one HD (either w/ RAID 0, stripped, or
standlaone) and my DATA on a another set of HDs (RAID 0, mirroring) since I
consider the OS expendable, my DATA is NOT. I'll usually risk lose of the
OS since it's only an inconvenience (at worst, I just reinstall). OTOH,
loss of my DATA is a catastrophe, I want EVERY measure possible to protect
it. To that extent, I employ RAID 1 (mirroring) among other measures.

JMTC

Jim

 

[Conor]

Any decent SCSI RAID card that provides you RAID 1 (mirror) for about $300
is "not a bad investment" if you can't afford to lose your precious data or
if you don't know enough to do manual recovery. The problem is, most people
opt for RAID 0 (striping) to get better performance which, from my
observation, is mostly a waste of time/money for home users. Your perf gains
will be modest and will probably be lower than if you had gotten better
memory chips.

That said, I am talking about SCSI cards (eg. Adaptec) and not the new
consumer motherboard RAID capabilities. I've never used them so I don't know
what they're good for and how reliable they are. However, that has nothing
to do with the concept of mirroring itself, which is a good thing.

Oh I totally agree about using proper SCSI RAID cards. The problem with
motherboard RAID arrays people are having when using MODE1 is actually
being able to get their data back on another motherboard.

Btw, the data safety thing; what exactly does that mean?

Use two partitions and store the user files/downloads etc on a second
partition with the OS on the first so that if the OS gets corrupted, a
format/reinstall won't lose your data. Bugger all use if your RAID
array goes titsup though.

 

[Conor]

RAID 1 (mirroring) is easily doable for the home user, AND, effective.
Heck, for IDE users, you can pick up a simple, cheap Promise FastTrak100 TX2
off eBay for $25-35 shipped. Cheap insurance.

Except it isn't. I've seen hundreds of posts from people trying to get
their info back using the mirror drive with all manner of grief. On a
proper server it's a few clicks of the keys/mouse if you have to do
anything at all.

Seems the most common
failure of HDs occurs when you get up one morning and find the HD dead, iow,
no chance to backup the latest changes.

So it's actually not mirroring properly then.

 

[BH2]

Hi Guys,
thanks for the advice,I think I will leave RAID alone, the safety thing,
sorry I did not explain myself properly, what I was told which now makes
sense, keep the OS on a separate drive to the data so if the OS get corrupt
you don't lose the data. One more thing is there any particular type of
Ram that is preferable. Thanx again
Regards
Bob