Help install 2 Sata drives please

[shinoman]

at the moment i have a 200GB sata hard drive. what i wish to achieve is to install a 2nd 750 or 1TB SATA drive as place to store/backup my files. i read somewhere that u can configure the 2nd one as the mirror of the ist one, incase ist one fails u still have the 2nd one.
Questions:
1. can i partition my 2nd drive to say 500GB for data storage, 500GB for the mirror of the ist drive?
2. what do i need to achieve this e.g software, and how would i set it up?

Any help wud be much appreciated. Thanks

[Jayne]

Depends.

Raid-0 (which is the raid in which the 1st hard drive is mirrored onto the second) can be done on partitions, as long as the partitions are full disk partitions and not done through something like "Partition Magic". You will either need to do it through the Windows install CD or get a copy of FDISK on a floppy disk.

Bear in mind though that Raid-0 isn't actually all that great. If you used, for example:

1x200GB Primary
1x500GB Seconday

And you Raid-0 them, you will get about 1/2 of the secondary disk left.

The best thing to do is get 3 hard disks and put them in hardware Raid-5.

This has disk striping and is much more effective than just mirroring.

You will still loose disk space in Raid-5 (as with any Raid setups) but it will effectively give you about 50-60% speed increase (as the data is written to all disks) and it acts as one big disk (same with Raid-0, but the speed gain is not so much on that).

Personally it's pointless, Get a big hard disk for backups, games, music, movies, installs etc and have a Windows disk that can be formatted without loss. Formatting Windows is something that should be done several times a year at least. It keeps all the crap form being built up so much.

/2p

[shinoman]

Personally it's pointless, Get a big hard disk for backups, games, music, movies, installs etc and have a Windows disk that can be formatted without loss. Formatting Windows is something that should be done several times a year at least. It keeps all the crap form being built up so much.
- you mean 1 hardrive for the OS - maybe round 50GB
and maybe a secondary hardrive say 1TB for the files?

sounds promising but wudnt that be too much of a hassle to load up all the software/drivers over and over again.

and if the secondary hard drive fails, data will be all gone. whats da best way to protect this then?

[Jayne]

Originally Posted by shinoman

- you mean 1 hardrive for the OS - maybe round 50GB and maybe a secondary hardrive say 1TB for the files?

Doesn't really matter on size.

Originally Posted by shinoman

sounds promising but wudnt that be too much of a hassle to load up all the software/drivers over and over again.

Depends. You could, if you found it irritating, get a ghost image a a completely fresh install (after drivers and your most frequent programs are installed) and just use that to "reinstall" Windows.

Originally Posted by shinoman

and if the secondary hard drive fails, data will be all gone. whats da best way to protect this then?

Don't really have a "gameplan" for this as modern hard drives are pretty robust; it's not likely that one will go out of action for at least 5 years. And depending on how it goes out (magnets will **** it up big time) you can nearly always get the data off (again, magnets will **** it up big time).

[shinoman]

Based from this, I came with this conclusion.
- It would be practical and more convenient for me to just have 1 HD for the OS (ideally, faster hard drive), and 1 HD for files.
- I would need to clean install my ist hardrive, install windows and my "cant live without" software and apps, then ghost it so i can just restore it when ever i wish to.
Questions: (related to ghost)
1. would there be any issues with apps that expires e.g. antivirus software, with ghosting (im not 100% familiar with it)
2. 1st HD would be master, 2nd HD would be slave..after restoring, would the OS automatically knows the 2nd hard drive?
3. what would be the best software for this? i only know ghost, but i havnt tried using it.

i apologize for the questions, though your help is much appreciated.thanks mate

[shinoman]

just a follow up on my last post:
- Can i partition my ist HD so that ist partition will be restored everytime i wish to, and the 2nd partition can be use for data as normal?
- Normally, how much space do u need to ghost it as I dont want to save the ghost image on just one media. e.g. would put it on multiple DVDs, external hardrive etc..

[Jayne]

1) Shouldn't be, depends on the apps ability to check the time.
2) Yep, although SATA doesn't quite work on a Master / Slave system (as in it doesn't use them).
3) Norton Ghost is the most user friendly.
4) Yep, Ghosting does it on a partion basis, as long as the partitions are low level partitions it will be fine (do it through FDISK or XP/Vista Install CD).
5) It doesn't compress the image, so you'll need as much space as your Windows install is.

[shinoman]

2) Yep, although SATA doesn't quite work on a Master / Slave system (as in it doesn't use them).

- ok, so just install the SATA drive on one of the available slot and onto the thing in the motherboard, without configuring anything, the OS should automatically detect it.

Other than that, i should be set on looking for the 2nd hard drive and norton ghost software. I appreciate your help matey thanks heaps

[Jayne]

Yep that'll do it and no probs.

[shinoman]

got the 2nd hardrive connected, can see and access it
clean install XO to one of my partition on th 1st HD, went well still cant access the 2nd HD and can see the partitions on my 1st HD.

Issue:
1. I cant open the other partitions of my ist hard drive from the My Computer, when I double click it. Im not in from of the PC now,but it gives " failed to load .dll" or something..however when I open the drive tru the folders I can access it.
I guess its not a big of deal, its just a bit restricting..
any ideas?

[Jayne]

Not really sure what you mean, but usually you will need to format the partitions in disk management (right-click my computer > Manage > Disk Management) before you can use them.

[lovekite]

No idea about this dude sorry