Windows 7: I needs suggestions...

Oh goodness, I'm really starting to puss out from using RAID 0 because I realized after formatting, I simply cannot risk losing 3.6 TERABYTES, of data with very low chances of recovery.

I hit up newegg today and looked for some SATA III solid state drives and there are some that have about over a dollar-per-gigabyte price ratio. Oy.

So now, I'm thinking I could budget out some more dollars for a SSD since the hard drives I'm planning to get are now at 130ish dollars. But, I do need and want that uber amount of storage while hybriding a SSD. The thing is though that I don't want to be changing file directories to different drives every time the hard drives run low on space.

I'm wondering if the two hard drives can be combined in Windows into one recognized drive, so the SSD is the C drive and the uber storage is the D drive, or U for Uber storage. I've heard that in Xp, two hard drives can be converted into dynamic disks and then they can be combine. And, if some USB flash drives are in use, they can be converted as well. OR, can all of the drives be converted into dynamic drives and made into the C drive? Or am I pushing my luck?

Is this a good plan? Thanksgiving!

Yes, it is considered as a safe method nowadays to create a RAID 0 array.

edit: please download your motherboard's raid utility called: AMD RAIDXpert V3.2.1540.10 for Windows
http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_...M_LE/#download

I suggest you to follow this tutorial!!!
http://www.qtools.com/dev/howtos/rai...atetoraid1.htm
When you are asked, answer with RAID0 not RAID1!



(second solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch_RDNSX5V8)

I was thinking that doing a RAID for the two hard drives might prove to be better since it could speed up archival file searching and help out with virtual machines. But the issue comes up again, that's WAY too much data to risk.

I was looking into dynamic drives and spanning volumes, that might work.

A RAID 0 is often NOT the way to go. And if you do go RAID 0 for performance, be absolutely sure that you
1). Backup
2). Backup often

I would also not really suggest spanning volumes within Windows simply to have 1 drive letter. Instead, keep your drives separate. This way, if anything were to happen to your machine, you could take 1 drive out, put it in another machine and be guaranteed to see all of your files. With a spanned volume setup, it may just not be that simple to plug in a remaining drive if another drive dies in the setup.

I mean, if you have 3.6TB of data, that's basically 2 x 2TB storage drives. So you have a D drive for 1 thing and an E drive for something else. That doesn't seem like too much to manage.

True, but after a while, I'd have to link up my libraries with two drives. Once I run out of space on one drive, I'd need to start putting them on the other drive. The same goes with music, etc...

I kind of like simplicity, which is why I'm running 7 and not vista.

There is always the option to...wait for it....wait for it...."store less" crap. Most things you could simply download again from the web anyway. I've never really understood how home users can fill up terabytes upon terabytes of stuff.

Buy the SSD drive and then use Raid 1 for the two other drives. This will alow for a solid back up of your data.

RAID1 is NOT a backup. If you get a virus and it deletes files, it deletes it from both..instantly. If you accidentally lose your mind and delete your files, it deletes from both instantly.

The term RAID and backup should only be used together by saying that with RAID you need to ensure you have a backup of your data. RAID provides redundancy, not a backup.

Being a digital whore?

I understand, but what is it that you are keeping? Do you have like every version of Firefox ever released? Do you have every movie you have ever seen stored on your computer? I'm just trying to understand how somebody amasses this much stuff and what they will ever do with it all.