New system build disk arrangement and recommendations

[rzym20]

Setting up a new PC booting off a 240GB SSD, but I'd like to establish a RAID 1 mirror to fully protect my OS and documents from disk failure. I have three drives...a 240GB SSD currently the OS boot drive, and two 500GB SSD's. Thinking of setting up a 500GB as the boot drive, the other 500GB as a RAID 1 mirror, and the 240GB as a backup drive for key files (pictures, music, documents, etc.) Does this make sense, is there a better approach, and are there any warnings i should understand before committing to this path?

 

[The Ether Bunny]

Why not have the SSD as boot/program and the HDDs in RAID 1 for redundancy and backup? The SSD needs to be your primary drive.

 

[rzym20]

Why not have the SSD as boot/program and the HDDs in RAID 1 for redundancy and backup? The SSD needs to be your primary drive.

All three drives are SSD's. If I set up as you describe with the SSD as boot/program and the HDDs in RAID 1 for redundancy and backup, wouldn't that mean that the OS and items on the boot drive would not be mirrored? Would the third drive mirror both the boot and second drives?

 

[The Ether Bunny]

I guess I didn't read thoroughly. Use 240 SSD for OS and programs. Use 500 SSDs in RAID 1 for data (documents, music, photos, etc.) and to back-up your 240. But RAID 1 is not really "fully protected". You should have an external drive outside of your PC to be "fully protected" like cloud storage, NAS, or portable hard drive. Personally, I would use those 500s in RAID 0 and buy a large mechanical drive for storage/back-up. Or even two mechanical drives in RAID 1.

 

[rzym20]

Good points. Is the best total solution to use the two 500GB SSD's in RAID 1, and then cloud store the backup of important files?

 

[The Ether Bunny]

That seems like a good option.

 

[rzym20]

Thanks for your help. One last question...what's the best way to get my Windows 7 OS off the 240GB SSD and onto one of the 500GB SSD's? Set up the 240 and one of the 500's in RAID 1, let the drives sync, and then just take out the 240, move the 500 to the SATA1 slot, and then set up the second 500 as the RAID 1 mirror? This is the part that I don't understand very well.

I am basically concerned that the 240GB's won't be enough to store everything I have as the primary boot and storage drive.

 

[The Ether Bunny]

That question is above my pay-grade. I am trying to do the same thing, kinda. But from what I have gathered, you will have to re-install the OS, can't just move it. You can make a partition on the 500 RAID to install the OS and not have to worry about the rest of the drive's contents being affected.