I'm going to building a new system utilizing GigaByte GA-8KNXP, 2 512 MB DDR400, ATI 128 MB 9700/9800 Pro and either a P4 2.6/2.8/3.0. I normally just play a lot of games, so I do use quite a lot of hard drive space, although currently on my old system I have two 80 GB drives and only have used maybe 50% of that so far. They are networked together with my wifes computer. I intend in a few more months to rebuild her system as well. Originally I was going to map out one of the harddrives so that both our systems was sharing to allow us to share files back and forth easier.
I'm not that familar with SATA/PATA or RAID, I've just used EIDE 7200 rpm WD drives. My motherboard has the capacity for these new features though so I'm trying to figure out what would be the best setup. I was thinking about getting 2 36.7 GB SATA WD Raptor Drives because I do like smooth gameplay as well as graphic rendering when I use photoshop.
From my limited knowledge of RAID if I use them then it treats them as one big hard drive, instead of seperate drives... so does that mean I won't be able to map out one drive for my wife to use on the network? I was also thinking of partitioning my drive so that the OS was on its own partition so if I had to reinstall I'd just reinstall it and not lose data due to OS corruption. Is this still feasable and advisable or am I just better off using a standard EIDE connection for the 2 drives?
Any help and advice would be appreciated. Thank you.
I'm not that familar with SATA/PATA or RAID, I've just used EIDE 7200 rpm WD drives. My motherboard has the capacity for these new features though so I'm trying to figure out what would be the best setup. I was thinking about getting 2 36.7 GB SATA WD Raptor Drives because I do like smooth gameplay as well as graphic rendering when I use photoshop.
From my limited knowledge of RAID if I use them then it treats them as one big hard drive, instead of seperate drives... so does that mean I won't be able to map out one drive for my wife to use on the network? I was also thinking of partitioning my drive so that the OS was on its own partition so if I had to reinstall I'd just reinstall it and not lose data due to OS corruption. Is this still feasable and advisable or am I just better off using a standard EIDE connection for the 2 drives?
Any help and advice would be appreciated. Thank you.