Partitioning Strategies - Sata Drives

Can you advertise in your local newsgroups about a swap (SATA -> IDE)? If
someone in the newsgroups I frequent offered that swap for my 200GB Seagate
IDE drive, I'd think seriously about it. And then you'd have the IDE drive
you want for your enclosure, and I'd have a SATA drive for internal use, so
everyone would be happy, right?

I can't answer your question about the SATA boot order, but as far as mirror
vs. RAID goes, here's a thought. If one of your RAID 0 drives go down,
you've lost all 400GB of stuff. Half of a RAID 0 array doesn't do you any
good, as far as I know. So you've basically doubled your risk of losing
everything. But you will get higher performance. If you mirror (RAID 1),
you would be halving your risk. Of course, neither of these approaches will
help with careless file deletions, viruses, etc, since what happens to one
drive will happen to the other. So don't think that by using RAID 1 you'll
be able to cut down on your backup. All it means that in the case of a hard
drive failure, you can be back up and running relatively quickly.

BTW, I've tried the divided pie approach before, but not with so many
partitions as you're thinking about. In the end, I've found it to be more
trouble than it's worth, so I've gone back to the whole pie. It always
seemed like I was running out of space on one partition or another, and then
you've got to figure out where you can put any application or large data
file, and then when you want to find it again, you've got to figure that out
too. Throw in a wife who is not exactly technically talented, and it's just
no fun anymore. I use my computer to organize things at home, not TO
organize. It's a little different when you start throwing Linux or other
OS's in the mix, however. There's my $0.02 worth (CAD). The divided pie
was also before my 200GB HD got installed. Maybe the extra space would have
helped, but I've found my data expands to fill available space...

Clint

"Robert Neville" <robert_neville@y@h0o.com> wrote in message
news:uff460tkqqp1jhg6fkv9skljffet8sb3ii@4ax.com...
 > I just bought two SATA 200GB hard drives and need some advice on
 > partitioning strategies. Several questions come to mind, so we'll
 > start with some background. My desktop currently has one 60 GB and one
 > 30 GB IDE drive The two drive and two DVD-R occupy all IDE channels (I
 > think). The system also has SATA motherboard support and 6 pin
 > firewire .
 >
 > Initially, I purchased these two drives with the rationale of placing
 > one hard drive in an external enclosure and another in my desktop
 > tower. The external drive would allow me to access some larger files
 > (like video files) on both my laptop and desktop while away from my
 > home network. The laptop has a 4 pin firewire cable (& USB 1.1). But
 > all firewire/USB enclosure only accepts IDE drive; not SATA drives. A
 > SATA external enclosure requires additional cards on both the laptop
 > and desktop.
 >
 > Now, I must decide on whether to remove the old drives; placing one in
 > the external enclosure; installing the SATA drives in the tower;
 > creating a RAID stripe or mirror; number of partitions & partition
 > sizes; and finally on the cluster size.
 >
 > 1) Does anyone market a SATA to IDE connector? So I could place the
 > SATA drive into an IDE external enclosure.
 >
 > 2) What happens when I remove the IDE drives from my desktop tower
 > setup? Does XP boot up with just SATA drives (or do we have similar
 > situation like removing the floppy drive a couple years ago)?
 >
 > 3) Do I create a RAID stripe or mirror? Does this lessen the total
 > amount of disk among the two SATA drives (400 GB)?
 >
 > 4) How do I calculate partition space effectively? Basically, I intend
 > on creating a spreadsheet to help strategize a partitioning scheme. My
 > setup will be complex having over 10 partitions with multiple OS (blah
 > blah blah!!). My partition strategy may change many times before
 > applying the final scheme.
 >
 > My questions relate to effectively and efficiently setting up large
 > amounts of storage space. These questions do not relate to using FDisk
 > or Partition Magic. Basically, I have to decide how much space to
 > allocate to XP, Linux, My Documents, MP3, Backup Images, and Video
 > (hence, divide the pie in a more precise manner).
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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