Syberclocker

I am about to install the drives on my new build. Scrounging around my various old boxes I have come up with a few but am now trying to allocate them for use. I also have a Dell XPS 200 that I want to use for surfing and home control, like a weather station recorder and x-10 lights etc. So it will get one drive (doesn't support any more than one)

Here is what I have to play with
SATA drives
Seagate 1Tb 7200.12 drive (new)
WD 320 gig (6mo old)
WD 320 gig (1 year old)
WD 80 gig (came with dell in 2006)

On one hand I was thinking of putting the 80 in the dell since it wount be a main data system, I could even set it up dual boot win/linux

For the main new box I could partition the 320's into an OS partition and a app/game/data drive and then mirror them. I have an external SATA enclosure I could stick the 1T in and shuttle it around as a master data library. THe only thing with it is its USB connection.

What ideas y'all have?

Syberclocker

hmmmm... maybe this should be moved to the hard drive forum?

Craiga35

Agreed.

OT: I'd put the two WD's in RAID0 and run those on the main rig, the 80 in the Dell and the 1Tb in an external enclosure. Have you thought of using E-Sata? you can get a cable and PCI cards for cheap and then all you would need is the enclosure.

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Syberclocker

I hot linked into this forum and forgot to move by mistake,
I suppose a moderator will move this, but until then...

Thanks for your suggestions you confirm my choices.
I've started looking at eSATA enclosures since the one I have only has a USB hookup. One that looks good so far (and comes with all the cables and backplate adapter) is the SNT 2318SUES or the Rosewill RS-358S.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817993036

Do I really need an eSATA bus card? It appears to me that the eSATA backplate adapter would connect directly into a SATA socket on my MB.

Although RAID-0 would be slightly faster, it is non-recoverable if one drive fails. RAID-1 might give me some speed on reads (reading from both disks if the controller firmware supports it) and a little slower on writes but better redundancey just in case.

Craiga35

PM a mod and have him move it for you, they won't bite, they are nice people, just like you and me. Just apologize and be polite.

No you don't need a bus card if it comes with the bracket.

I'd want the speed personally but if you want the safety of RAID-1 go right ahead!

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