Partition, add 2nd drive, Vista - what order?

Thanks Keith, 'preciate it.

 

I notice that you're configured for dual-boot.  Would you (or anyone else) recommend that I create 50GB or so of unallocated space immediately after the C:[WINXP] partition, then create the DATA, CAPTURE and other partition(s) after that?  I would eventually install Vista to this unallocated space contiguous to the C:[WINXP] partition.  Also, any tips re: how to setup dual-boot would be appreciated.  I have a 250GB external hard drive, and own Partition Magic, Acronis Disk Director and True Image, which should make this easier.

 

(p.s. my understanding of RAID 0 is that when I add the 2nd drive and configure, a migration process of some sort will occur, to make the 2 x 250GB drives behave as 1 x 500GB drive... I have no idea what's going to happen with the extra 250GB - will it be shown as unallocated space or will the existing partitions be resized in some fashion?)

Yes, you can partition your current drive the way you propose, install apps, etc before you install the 2nd drive without losing any data. Eventhough RAID is set to "on" in the BIOS, you don't have a 2nd drive yet so you really aren't using RAID yet.

 

When you add the 2nd drive, go into the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software in XP and use the Wizard to setup RAID. Don't use the Intel ROM Utility (what you see at boot up time) to setup RAID 0 or you'll lose all your data. From the software Manager, you can select RAID 0 or 1. I use RAID 1 and I know when I set that up, the Matrix Storage Manager mirrored my first drive to my new drive without me having to do "prepare" the new drive. I have no idea what will happen with RAID 0.

 

Good Luck.

You can create whatever space you want for your Vista and other partitions.

 

I used Acronis Disk Director to resize my C partition down to 30GB. Out of the unallocated space after that, I created a 30GB logical partiton for Vista, 61GB logical partition for Storage and a 100GB logical for backups where I put my Acronis True Image images. Since I have RAID 1, I don't have a need to create the images externally. I also changed the drive letter of the RECOVERY parition to G so that XP and Vista would always show up as C and D when booted into that OS and the other two as E and F. I used Acronis Disk Director from both OS's to do this.

 

My partitions look like the following:

FAT16 (55mb) hidden Dell Utilities

G: Recovery 10GB

C: XP MCE 30GB

D: Vista 30GB

E: Storage 61GB

F: Backups 100GB

 

I really don't know about how the additional 250GB will appear after your RAID 0 migration completes.

Raid 0 will display the total useable space of both hard disks as one. Something like 467 or so Gb's.

Just realize that using Raid 0 if you have one disk fail you will loose everything. So if you go this route make sure to have a 3rd drive either internal or external to backup all your data.

Yes, what dcgtls said is absolutely true!!!

I use raid 0 in both of my 700's, performance is AWESOME, but my system is set to back up every Friday nite automatically, and if I edit any images, or add any important files, I manually back them up before I shut down. My systems use 2-250gb WD drives in raid 0 for the primary drive, and 2 single 500gb WD drives for storage and backup, plus numerous external drives for b/u and storage. basically, I don't store much at all on my primary drive. I like raid 0, but it's certainly not for everyone.

So be sure you want to go through this type of back up process before you decide to go raid 0. Raid 5 is an option, but I'm not sure if the Intel board supports it.

Personally since you want to have dual boot setup, I would not RAID the two drives.   Not sure how well RAID would work with two version of the OS either.  

 

Also problem with RAID 0 loosing everything if one drive fails.