HDDs/What to do with them?

[sleepyhead]

To date I now have the following:
WD500GBAAKS
Samsung 750GB F1
2x Samsung 1TB F1

Externally: 300GB Maxtor

Legacy: Maxtor 120GB and 200GB PATA

Forgetting the Legacy stuff (this will be use for something in the future...) I am abit of a loss over how to effectively use all my HDDs.

My initial plan was for the WD500GB as my OS drive but due to various reason this has ended up being a data drive and the Samsung 750GB is now partitions, 100GB OS and 600GB for data. I recently purchased a couple of 1TB drives and now is the perfect time to get everything sorted.

My motherboard has 4 SATA ports therefore I can only use 3 of the 4 SATA HDDs. I'm not interested in have all 4 loaded at once either. Initially I was going to keep the OS and data as they were (on the wrong drives), use one of the new 1TB drive internally as a "scratch pad" of raw video footage and the other 1TB drive in an external caddy for back up.

However, speaking a bit with TAKTAK and it maybe better to do a Mirror RAID with the 2 1TB drives and use them as data storage, which would free up the other two drives with one of those two being the "scratch pad" for raw video footage and using the 300GB maxtor external as another source to back up data.

But I have no idea how to setup RAID or even if it is worth setting up RAID using the on board motherboard features.

So just shooting it out there for you guys to throw your views in and help me install some of these new F1 drives

So in summary:
Option 1:
Samsung 750Gb - OS and partial data
WD500AAKS - Data
Samsung 1TB - "scratch pad" data
Samsung 1TB - Back up of the above

Option 2:
WD500GB - OS + games + misc.
Samsung 750Gb - "Scratch pad" data
2x Samsung 1TB - Mirror RAID data.

[staffsMike]

Mirror raid takes about 12 seconds to sort out if you really want to. It's just a quick bios (style) activity where you select how to RAID (0, 1 .. etc..) what to raid (2 x 1TB's) and go lol

I wouldn't bother with it though unless you are particularly anal about losing everything, it's useful enough I supose but it's better to have a proper back up else where or do some proper RAIDing i.e RAID 5.

If you are just backing up media there is no point. Just stick the other 1TB in a caddy or something and use it as more external backup. Trusting a maxtor to do that job is playing with fire lol

[sleepyhead]

After more thinking... (dangerous this habit of mine)

I'm contemplating getting a 3rd 1TB drive and setup RAID 5 via the motherboard SATA connections. Now there is only 4 ports so will use the spare port for the OS drive and hoping to use something like this to connect the SATA DVD-RW drive.

Sound idea?

Alternatively there are the more expensive dedicated SATA RAID PCI-X cards.

The RAID array will just host data (photos, movies etc.) and I can use the spare drives as backups of the RAID array (or so the theory goes).

[this_is_gav]

PCI-X isn't going to work on a consumer motherboard. You'll be wanting PCI-e of some description (probably 4x or better).

[Funkstar]

PCI-X isn't going to work on a consumer motherboard. You'll be wanting PCI-e of some description (probably 4x or better).

Although some PCI-X cards are backwards compatible to regular 32bit PCI.

[sleepyhead]

Ahh ok, I'll avoid PCI-X stuff then. Thanks for the heads up.

But still unsure if I should go the 3x1TB RAID 5 via Motherboard or use a dedicated PCI-e card for RAID? If the latter, what kind of price am I looking at?

Also, if I upgrade the motherboard could I "transplant" the RAID 5 array to the new motherboard with little complication?