Newbie needs help with RAID and partitions

[mterickson82]

I am planning a build what i want is (2) raptors 150gb and (2) wd 7200 rpm 750gb, both are sata interface for complete build info http://www.computerforum.com/97890-first-comp-build.html

My mobo is set up to do raid(0,1,0+1,5) i want the best performance i can get but i want some stabilty the 750gb hd's are for media and data storage, the raptors will be for games and os i will be running vista ult 64bit. I was curious if i can set up the raptors raid 0 for performance and set up the others raid 0+1. that is my first question if that is possible? would i be better off doing raid 0? can i set it to appear as 2 hd's and just back up all info to disks or external hd's for redundancy and security? next question i would like to partition the drives i would like to set aside say 1st 50gb on raptors for os. will that be enough? i would also like to set up a maybe 15 or 20 gb for dwnloads, that i can scan and move later, and the rest for games and apps i load a lot? and on the data drives can i set up half for media(movies, music, pics) and the rest for data? I am not sure if any of this will work and will it be worth it as far as performance gains? will setting aside the partition for dwnloads help in case viruses and the like that may get dwnloaded or will that not matter? any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[mterickson82]

Ok i am a visual learner and this is what i sketched up i think this is what i was explaining above plz advise.

____________ ____________ __________________

____750gb___|___750gb____| = |____1.5tb raid 0____| as far as what shows in "my comp" screen for hard drives same as both the raptors show as 300gb hard drive. Lets label these C: for raptors and D: for data. Ok now if i partition it would look like this?

_inner_____________________________outer(faster access correct?)

|_750gb media_|_748gb data_|_2gb page file_| 1.5tb RAID0

H: G: & F: ----------------- drives

_inner_____________________________outer

|_20gb dwnlods_|_230gb gam/apps_|_50gb OS| 300gb RAID 0

E: D: C: --------------drives

does windows give me the ability to label with letter of my choosing or does it do that automatically? Would this help with performance or is it overkill? I also understand when i format the drives i wont get the actual number of 750gb or so on it will be a little less