New build

[bruisedpelvis]

Ok I currently have the following:

VGA XFX 7950GX2 1GB PVT71UZDF9 RT
MEM 1Gx2|KST DII667 KVR667D2N5K2/2G - X 2
HD 150G|WD 10K 16M SATA WD1500ADFD
ST3400633AS-RK 400GB X 2
PSU TT|W0117RU 750W RT
MB ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe NF4SLI
Intel Duo Core 2 E6600
Cmstaker 830

My question is what is the best way to set up my hard drives.... I original bought the 150 raptor for the os only but now people are telling me to use it for storage and put the two 400 gig in raid 0.... Also when in the OS my ram is only showing 2.67 which someone else is telling me I need the 64 bit Windows in order to get full use of my ram. I am so confused at this point on how to set this system up now, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated..

thanks

[DarkPacMan77]

I cannot help you on the ram, but remember, that your ram is not always going to read at the highest it can be, b/c you will have other devices taking memory from it... someone else can further the understanding of that aspect.

I would keep the raptor for storage and put the 400 gig in raid b/c that way, you have a lot of backed up information, and that is the best way to use raid from my understanding.

I am a beginner builder, but, I still know tons

[bruisedpelvis]

So let me make sure I am clear which drive would the operating system go on the raid drives or the 150??

[DarkPacMan77]

if you have two raid HDs, and if i understand raid fully, one HD would be to just "copy" files or something, so that if a hard drive fails, you still have your files. You could still use one of the 400gb hard drives for storage, as well as the 150 raptor... am i correct, or do you not know either lol?

I have read about raid, and it isn't something i would do at all anyways, though if my hard drives fail... i lose files, but, anything really important, i backup somehow. Downloaded media can be downloaded again, no biggie. Personally, I would use all three for storage, and put the OS on probably the raptor b/c i've heard good things about them. Western Digital is a great brand though too.

[bruisedpelvis]

Yeah i think thats the way i am going to go the raid stuff doesn't seem to be that great of a concept for what i want to do on the computer anyways....Also from what I have read just now Raid 0 has no fault tolerance anyways, so if one drive went down you would still lose your files. http://www.raidweb.com/whatis.html

[DarkPacMan77]

Not to deter you from raid... raid seems like ONE HELLUVA GREAT CONCEPT... but only if you have ONE HELLUVA WALLET... I would like to have a good raid setup... but, i've been using old IDE HDs my whole life... and they haven't failed... not even one from a computer that is 16 y/o... so, if something failed, i would have to count some other part like the PSU for the failure. HDs are built with great quality nowadays.

Perhaps someday in the future... say you have extra money... I would look into a possible raid setup... Raid is obviously a good idea, or so many ppl wouldn't be using... just, for the average person, it isn't needed. If you have just short of one terrabyte of space, like in your case... honestly, raid doesn't sound too bad... after all, that is a LOT of space to fill, even for a person that craves downloaded media

[blue60007]

Raid 0 offers very little performance boost (only improvement in benchmarks, but nothing real-world)...and as you said, if one drives goes kaput, you lose all your data. I think the Raptor will be much faster. From what I've seen, Raid 0 even makes some things slower, like access times (delay in reading data). To get top notch performance, you really have to have expensive hardware RAID controllers, and it's not cost effective.

Raid 0 "splits" data over two drives and Raid 1 "mirrors" data onto both drives (so if one drive goes down, you've got an exact copy on the working drive).

[bruisedpelvis]

Well thanks for the advice guys, now I just have to work on my CD rom master slave issue and I am set

[DarkPacMan77]

i was unfamiliar with raid 0 and raid 1 when i was giving advice. I was only familiar with raid 1. I had read about raid 0 but thought it was raid 1 b/c of lack of clarification in the article, but still got the main points. all in all, it is great if you have the money to be able to backup your stuff easily... if not, use your "near terrabyte" system to download and install alllllll the huge programs and files you want

[blue60007]

You could always do Raid 0+1 - which stripes over two disks and mirrors those disks onto another two. Definitely NOT cost effective.

To answer some of your other questions...

Yes, regular XP limits you to around 3 gigs (plus or minus) and would need 64 bit XP to fix that. 64 bit XP is to be avoided...driver support isn't there among other things. I don't think anything over 2 gigs is useful anyways (at least right now).

What CD-ROM issues are you having?

[bruisedpelvis]

I have two cd rom drives, both are chained wiich one is set to master and one to slave... I first plugged them into my Primary IDE and got nothing from either one of them, I then plugged the cable into the secondary IDE and the slave one is working. I wasn't sure if changing the jumpers to cable select would help any, I also checked the cable but didn't see any issues there either. I do however have one more IDE port I am not using would i be able to simply just hook each one seperatly to their own port?

[bruisedpelvis]

Also I think i will hold out on the 64 bit and wait for vista anyways 1 gig isn't worth shelling out over 100 buck for an OS when a new one is coming

[DarkPacMan77]

you can hook each one seperately to it's own port if you wish. It should work just fine that way. I've done that in the past anyways... so, yea. If you want a floppy drive, you may have to learn to fix the slave-master problem though

[bruisedpelvis]

and just set them both as master? or do i still have to have one set master and one slave

[DarkPacMan77]

in the bios, it should select the one that is in the "master" ide slot... to master anyways...
to ensure that... i would hook one up to the master, then power on, then power off, and hook the other up... that should ensure it to work.

((keep in mind that all advice from building and repairing is self taught for me, up until a month ago when i learned "terms" lol I would consider myself highly reliable though))

[bruisedpelvis]

nope thats cool its good advice, I have been pretty much learning on my own since I started this myself. Forums have helped out a lot

[DarkPacMan77]

now that i have learned the terms... i can apply that to my already "advanced" knowledge and possibly make a carreer out of something like this... this is really fun stuff to me for some reason. I'm happy to be able to help. The thing with the IDE should work like i said... at least, it has for my dell 4500 bios... so it should be the same for anything newer i would hope lol

[bruisedpelvis]

well its not gonna hurt anything so i will give it a shot

[DarkPacMan77]

as long as you tell how it went... i'd like to know the results and help more if i can.

[bruisedpelvis]

I will post it tomorrow at work right now, this is where I brainstorm

[DarkPacMan77]

ok that works out, i always get on the forums around this time every day anyways.

[bruisedpelvis]

Well hopefully this will take care of all my issues, just i have to repartion the my hard drives because i didn't load the motherboard drivers first and lost a lot of drive space.

[DarkPacMan77]

yea, the 137 gig issue

[bruisedpelvis]

Yeah i actually fixed the issue with one of the drives i wasn't using but it also did the same thing to the 150 gig drive so I am just going to repartition it and relload windows

[Cricket]

If you're using the original WinXP without SP1 or SP2, you can slipstream SP2 into WinXP and that will help you get around the 137GB issue.

Cricket

[bruisedpelvis]

Well I finally got everything running, I double checked the rom drives and the cable was so torn.