I'm building a newer dedicated PC for my hifi/media streaming. THe mobo only has 2 satas. I'm getting 2 250gig sata harddrives for that. Is it better off to run windows from the sata connection vs. the regular ide channel?

i don't understand the raid crap, do I need to configure that with my sata harddrives if I only need it for storage?

 

sata is faster than pata :dunno:

 

so do I just configure in the bios to run windows off from sata?

 

sata > pata.

you'll be fine... just plug them in and set the bios to boot to the first sata drive.

if you want to do raid... you can run raid 0, which will stripe data over the 2 drives... giving you more performance, and will make the 2 drives appear as one.

 

and how do i set the 2 drives to raid 0? do i need certain softwares to do so?

thanks for the reply

 

But, w/ raid0 if either drive fails, he's screwed. I'd mirror them personally. (raid1)

 

thats completely up to him.


raid is set in the bios.

raid 0 = striping data over 2 drives = performance
raid 1 = mirroring data over 2 drives = fault tolerance

 

Hardware raid, yes Software raid is another beast.

As to up to him, i was just giving another option

 

i know....

personally.... i would do raid 5 with a third drive.

losing all your mp3s and videos sucks. happened to me once

 

yeah, happened to me too. My motherboard at home doesn't support raid either, so, for now, i have 2 500gb externals, a stash on my pc, and also my mp3 player (and dvd copies)