Hi Zog,
About RAID, the most common RAID setups are RAID 0 and RAID 1.
RAID 0 is mostly used to gain as much speed as possible. I am *not* fond of RAID 0 because it
doubles the chances of data loss. If one drive fails, data is lost and the system is down for a substancial amount of time. Due to the unreliable nature of RAID 0, I never recommend it, regardless of speed gains (which tend to be modest anyway).
RAID 1 is used to increase reliabilty. In RAID 1, one drive is the mirror of the other. The system can keep operating even if one drive fails. RAID 1 will result in a performance gain during disk reads and a performance penalty during disk writes. The gain or loss of speed in the system depends on which, reads or writes, are more common. Generally speaking, I like RAID 1 but I dislike that so much space on the drive is "wasted".
With 2 hard drives and a little discipline, it is possible to configure a system that will have most of the reliability of RAID 1 and most of the speed of RAID 0.
With 2 drives, I'd configure the system roughly this way.
Drive 1 - Raptor 70GB (74 "marketing" gigabytes)
Partition C - Label "R74 System A" - 4 GB - 1st Windows installation
Partition D - Label "Pagefile A" - 6 GB - for pagefile and temp files
Partition E - Label "R74 System B" - 8 GB - Working Windows installation
Partition F - Label "R74 Programs A" - 30 GB - for programs
Partition G - Label "R74 Data A" - 12 GB - for Data
Partition H - Label "R74 Attic A" - 10 GB - for seldom accessed files
Total 70GB
Drive 2 - WD3200YS 298GB (320 "marketing" gigabytes)
Partition C - Label "Y30 System C" - 4 GB - Mirror of "System A"
partition D - Label "Y30 Pagefile B" - 6 GB - same use in drive 1
partition E - Label "Y30 System D" - 8 GB - Windows Installation for testing
partition F - Label "Y30 Programs B" - 50 GB - " " " "
partition G - Label "Y30 Data B" - 80 GB - " " " "
partition H - Label "Y30 Attic B" - 150 GB - " " " "
Total 298GB
This is how I would split those drives if they were going into one of my systems. Note that I make the partitions for "programs" quite large, this is because I use a *lot* of *very large* programs. I have a total of 80GB just for programs, this may be more than what you need, only you really know how much space you might really need. If you decide to make the "programs" partitions smaller, add the space to the "data" partitions.
The "Attic" partitions serve multiple purposes, one is to segregate the slowest part of the drive. People don't realize how much of a difference this makes. Actively using the end part of a hard drive guarantees having a system that will be significantly slower than it would be if that part was either not used or, used little. Another purpose of the Attic partitions is to
provide space for backup files you will need in case you have to recover from a sofware or hardware problem.
Note also, the partitions labelled "pagefile" should be FAT32 not NTFS. This gives you a little extra performance at no cost as far as reliability is concerned.
The "Y30 System D" or (Y30 System 4 - if you prefer to enumerate them instead of alphabetizing them) is meant for test purposes. Very often I download software that someone recommended. I don't install it in my working Windows installation, I install it in this "test" installation. If the software is good and, I end up being really interested in keeping it then it makes it to my working installation otherwise, it ends up being discarded at some point. This Windows installation is "disposable" I refresh it using a ghost image file quite often.
In the Attic partitions I keep a ghost image of "System A","B", "C" and "D". This allows me to recover from a non-bootable Windows installation easily. I also keep images of "Programs A" and "Programs B" for which I create a new ghost image every once in a while. Everytime I create new images of "Programs A" and "Programs B", I also create a new image of "R74 System B".
There is one downside to the setup I've suggested here. There is enough space on "Y30 Attic B" to keep a backup/"ghost image" of "R74 Data A" but there is *not* enough space to keep a backup of "Y30 Data B" anywhere. I'd back that up on an external drive or on DVDs.
In "R74 Programs A", I would install the programs that are very slow to load (usually large programs) and install the smaller programs on "Y30 Programs B". The idea is to balance the load and to use the fastest drive for the programs that are slowest to load while using the slower drive to load programs that load faster (usually because they are smaller.)
Force the pagefile to be in "Y30 Pagefile B". The "Y74 Pagefile A" will actually be unused. If you ever have a hardware problem on the "Y30" drive then you will need (and use) the "Y74 Pagefile A".
One thing that has nothing to do with partitions but, is absolutely great to have is Virtual Machine software like VMWare or Virtual PC. This can spare you from having a "Windows installation for testing" since you can test software in a Virtual machine. This eliminates the hassle of having to reboot to get into the test installation since a Virtual machine can be started and closed at anytime. Another great convenience afforded by a Virtual Machine is that you don't need to have an anti-virus, anti-spyware, pop-up blocker, etc installed in your main Windows installation because you use a VM (Virtual Machine) that has the anti-virus and anti-whatever stuff loaded to go on the net. if you happen to get a virus, spyware, trojans or any other kind of crudware, no sweat, it will be gone as soon as you close the VM. Of course, you keep a backup of the initial VM installation in the "Attic" partitions so you can refresh it quickly and often. I'd use the "R74 Attic A" for that. Note that you need a fair amount of memory to have a VM running while keeping your real system responsive. 2GB is plenty enough. For Internet access I use a VM with 384MB of RAM dedicated to it and that works fine.
Other important notes,
1. You actually need to install Windows from scratch in partitions C & E. You *cannot* use Ghost or other software to "copy"/image C to E. It won't work and if you force it work, it still won't work (the registry in use will not be the correct one and there is no way around this problem)
2. Create all your Windows installations on the first drive (in this case R74). Do this *without* any other drive connected to the system (don't have the Y30 drive connected to the system)
3. Configure your Windows C & E installations and create a ghost image of C, save it in "R74 Attic" (temporarely)
3. When you are all done, the letters assigned to the partitions on the second drive will *not* be as I showed them. You will have to use "Disk Management" to assign them better drive letters than Windows will. I suggest one of these two configurations,
Partition C - "R74 System A"
Partition D - "Y30 Pagefile B"
Partition E - "R74 System B"
Partition F - "R74 Programs A"
Partition G - "Y30 Programs B"
Partition H - "R74 Data A"
Partition I - "Y30 Data B"
Partition J - "R74 Attic A"
Partition K - "Y30 Attic B"
Partition L - "Y30 System C"
Partition M - "Y30 System E"
Partition N - "R74 Pagefile B"
The above configuration groups the partitions by usage, e.g, program, data and attic partitions together, the first one of the group is always on the faster drive, the second one on the slower and larger drive.
The second configuration would simply be having the partitions sequential, first all the partitions on drive R74 with letters C, D, E, F, G, H, followed by the partitions on Y30 with letters I, J, K, L, M, N. Personally, I prefer the former over the latter.
Another note about drive letters, I always assign my CD/DVD burner the letter W (for "Write"), the next optical drive the following letter, drive X. I assign letter V to any virtual CD/DVD, for instance, my VirtualCloneDrive is letter V (for "virtual"). That way all the drives of a "kind" are grouped together when in Windows Explorer.
This is a lot of information and re-reading it, I regret that it is not really all that well organized. I can walk you thru the installation step-by-step when you are ready to assemble your new machine.
HTH.
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