So its time for me to look into this thing called RAID. I have no real idea what it is or if its for me.
Right now I have a single 320 gb hdd that I partitioned into 2.
I am getting a new 1TB internal since media is taking up more and more.
Plus I want to back up my PC before I format and reinstall XP.

Does anyone here use RAID settings?

Also when I put the 320GB HDD in I remember that it only showed up as something like 170GB. I think it had something to do with the mobo. Any ideas why this happened?

Trusting wiki leads me to believe RAID is not for me.
Not yet anyway.
Maybe it would be better to synchronize an external drive for backing up important data. I believe this is possible.

Doesn't sound like you NEED RAID... I mean, if you had 2 500GB HD's that you wanted to either have the one's data mirror to the other, or you wanted both drives to be shown as 1, THEN you'd go RAID...

It's rather nice though when you're using it :P

Try a bios upgrade. That will probably fix the HDD detection issue.

If you care for your media and want to make sure you don't lose it, instead of buying 1TB buy 2x500Gb and set up a RAID-1, or mirroring. If one disk fails, you still have your media on the other one.

Also, stay away from Seagate Barracuda HDDs since there are a number of 500Gb and the 1Tb HDDs that have the firmware fucked up.

i have 2x Seagate Barracuda 500GB drives in a Raid0 array (1tb) and haven't personally had any problems, but have heard a lot of users with issues

Mine is setup like Giz's on my server and havent had any problems either.

Yeh, I had you buy the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM drive didn't I?

I've primarily heard of the seagate hd f'ups on the 750gb+ drives

The funny thing is, the only reason i chose Seagate over WD is that their warranty policy was 5 years; seems they lowered it to 3 years like everyone else...

RAID-0 and RAID-1 are very different.

With RAID-1 or mirroring, you have half the space, but if one drive fails you still have all your data intact on the second drive.

With RAID-0 you distribute the data across the disks so you have better speed and performance, but if any one of your drive fails, all your data is LOST.

It's all about what you want:
RAID-0 more speed, space.
RAID-1 less space and speed but better security for your data.

If you want both then you need a RAID-5, but then you need at least 3 disks.

Regards,
dg.

thanks dg.

I'm going to opt for the 2 500gb drives.
And will look into updating the bios.
I remember the bios had to be upgraded once already.
When I put my computer together it didn't work cause the CPU wasn't being picked up or something. Because I didn't know anything about it (still don't) I took it interstate to the place I ordered the parts from and got them to look at it. Grrr ($100).
I am pretty sure thats all they did though 1year later I realise my USB2.0 is at USB1.0 speeds so I browse the net and fix that.

ASUS P5N32-E SLi PLUS NVidia Dual X16

Likely all they did was update your BIOS, so good waste of $100 :P