Windows 7 - Best way to configure these hard drives?

I don't think I ever had the proper know-how on how to manage my hard drives. I don't partition the drives into smaller ones nor use RAID (or know how to and how it would benefit me). I always wondered if I can get better performance out of the drives I currently have...

So right now, I have a WD Raptor 740GD (74GB), a WD 640AAKS (640GB) and a newly installed SAMSUNG F3 HD103SJ(1TB). I also have a thermaltake sata>usb docking station.

Currently the Raptor is my OS drive, along with programs that I often use (Adobe Photoshop, ArcMap, Firefox, etc). The WD 640GB acted as a storage drive for all my downloaded anime and DVD library. I also use this drive to install games onto and video-editing projects that take a lot of space. The Samsung is brand new and empty right now.

I move files around often; off to an external drive and back to my internal drives. I don't know whether I should get rid of the Raptor altogether and use the 640aaks as the os, programs and games drive with the 1tb samsung as storage. Or is there an actual real-world difference that I should know about the Raptor?

The Raptor is a 10,000 RPM drive. It is therefore faster than either of your other drives.

If I were you, I would keep the Raptor as your OS drive. Install whatever programs you can to the 640 GB drive, and use the 1TB drive as backup/storage.

Both the 640 and the 1TB are 7200 RPM drives, so they should be essntially the same speed. The reason I recommend the Samsung for backup is it is a good idea to have more backup space than your drives hold.

That means that you could literally clone both the 640 and 74 GB drives sector for sector to your 1TB drive. Of course, that is usually unnecessary, but you can see my point.

Thanks for the advice! I was wondering, I have a sata>USB docking station that I might want to utilize. Since it is USB, will it slow down read/write speed if I were to use it for one of my hard drives? I would like to be able to have a drive that can swap between two computers, and if it is possible be able to use the programs/games installed interchangeably.

So is it better to have ONLY the OS on the raptor? Would I not see any performance gain from the programs I use if I were to install them on the raptor? Or will any real world difference not be noticed if I just go ahead and installed them on the 640gb.

Also, what's this thing about RAID? Could I do something like that with the drives I have? Would there be any performance increase?

You may see some improvements in programs (especially games) if you stick them on your Raptor. Use your judgment however; on a drive that small, you will need to decide which programs you install on it.

Unfortunately, unless you have portable apps, you cannot use them on a machine other than the one you installed the program on.

If you have the hard drive bay, I would stick to internal.

There are different types of raid. Raid 1 mirrors 2 drives so they are identical in real time and good to have if one drive fails because you will still have the other one. The drawback is that if they are both 500gb you only have 500gb total and they are not immune to a virus because they work as one. Raid 0 uses both drives to speed up fetching info by utilizing many sectors. There is also raid 5 etc and you can run many drives at once. Look up RAID in Wikipedia.