Brand New to Raid: Question?

[biga]

I am building a brand new system with all new parts. I have 2 IBM 60 gig deskstars in raid 0 on a Soyo Dragon Ultra, and am gonna be running Win 2k.
(I am new to raid to raid so forgive my ignorance)

Questions:
1. I have figured out how to set up the raid array in the bios but my question is when? if? and how? do I format the 2 drives?

2. Also any suggestions on the best and most efficient way to install Win 2k on the raid array?

3. What is the best striping size for gaming, mp3s, and normal desktop usage?

 

[scamtrOn]

umm sorry about not answerin ur question, but i just want to warn u that with two ibm drives you've just increased the chance of data loss by 50%. if there is any chance of an exchange please highly consider it.
and if ur question is not answered next time i look here i'll answer it. best of luck to you friend.

<b><font color=blue>micheal jackson is cool

 

[PCcashCow]

I would worrie about that raid 0 so much if you have more realiable HDD's but it ok.

First, set up the raid 0 in the HighPoint bios. You should set your striping to 64 first, just to see if you like, you can always bump it up at anytime without loosing data.

Second, drop in the W2k disk and press F6 when the frist blue screen pops up to install the high point drivers (you can do this by simply copying the windows 2000 raid folder and the soyo disk to a floppy)

Third. Windows 2000 will allow to format both the drives, and create as many partitions as you'd like. For my set up I have a 6 gig partition for W2k. You may want to make a few more partitions for games and what nots

You can format all these (to ntfs)

Then just ride the billy boy gates express.

When all is instlled make sure that HPT37* driver is installed under devices.

Let me know if you need help


----Tim

It seems that every time I reboot my wallet gets smaller.

 

[PCcashCow]

ohh yeah, if you come across another 60 giger cheap, i would reccomend getting it, you cand change your raid configuration at anytime as well and add the spare (raid 0+1 is very good)

It seems that every time I reboot my wallet gets smaller.

 

[biga]

Thanks guys so much for the info. I didn't know that IBMs were so unreliable, oh well. How hard would it be to make my setup a raid 0+1? How many more drives would I need cause now I am kinda concerned about failure