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Thread ID: 80447 2007-06-23 12:20:00 Let's build a PC (June 2007) Metla (12) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
562233 2007-10-05 05:31:00 Haha well I guess you could consider me one of those people that go for functionality (is that a word?) rather than appearance, but each to their own!

Yeah the PSU is brilliant.. Iv only used 3 ports on the back of it, I think theres about 10 from memory? Ah well.. 		Damz (10942)
562234 2007-10-12 01:55:00 Oh Damz, I forgot to mention - if you are thinking of doing a RAID setup for your 2 320GB HDDs, you'll need to buy a PCI SATA2 RAID controller. The P5K only has ICH9, which only lets you do a RAID setup for one internal and one external HDDs, not all internal.

If you want to make an internal RAID setup, you'll want the P5KR, which is basically a P5K but with ICH9R, which supports all-internal RAID setup. I think it's $210 or so. 		qazwsxokmijn (102)
562235 2007-10-12 03:01:00 You lost me! :(

Having said that though, at the moment, I only have one of my HDD working, theyre both in there, and plugged in, but I didnt get the chance to format the 2nd one during XP installation..

Whats RAID mean? Sorry, still learning :help: 		Damz (10942)
562236 2007-10-12 03:42:00 RAID links hard drives together in an array. There are several different kinds of it.

You can join the drives together into one big drive, or mirror them so that they back each other up. With 3+ drives you can have one drive that provides redundancy for the rest, so any one drive can fail without data loss. 		george12 (7)
562237 2007-10-12 06:55:00 Oh right. I was hoping to use one drive for the OS and system files/programs, and the other drive for storage or music, movies etc..

How would I go about that? 		Damz (10942)
562238 2007-10-12 13:58:00 Bugger RAID, just format the other drive and use it for all your por... media. roddy_boy (4115)
562239 2007-10-12 18:49:00 Hahaha, who, me? :xmouth:

How do I format the other drive? The only place that its even recognised is in the bios, but I didnt see a format option?! 		Damz (10942)
562240 2007-10-12 21:26:00 Right click My Computer. Click Manage. Click Disk Management. You'll see the drive there. Right click the new drive, and click Initialize (if it's not done already).

Then right click it again and click format or something similar. Go through the wizard to partition an format the drive. Just keep clicking Next, but enable 'Quick Format' in the appropriate step if you want to save a lot of time. 		george12 (7)
562241 2007-10-12 23:06:00 Ahuh! Thanks george!!

To be honest, I dont really need the extra HDD so I hadnt looked on google for the answers to that one yet!

Would there be any any benefit in keeping media and system files seperate? As in, the processor going through all the files to open programs etc? Im way out of my depth and dont really know what im talking about, it just made sense to me thats all :p 		Damz (10942)
562242 2007-10-13 01:26:00 That's a very good idea if you've got the space. The reason is that you can do anything to the OS without affecting your files.

If you have XP, leave at least 15GB for the operating system, and if you have Vista leave 25GB. This may seem large, but running out of room on the OS partition is very, very annoying and you can afford the space with large HDDs.

Then you can put your data on the remainder of the drive, or the other drive, whichever you prefer.

Right click My Documents, click Properties and change the location to a folder on the partition or drive you want it on.

There won't be a speed advantage, but when it comes time to reinstall Windows you can start fresh without worrying about your data (but remember to move over things that live on the Windows drive/partition, like your e-mails and desktop).

If this is a bit much for you, I can give more detailed instructions once you decide how you want to arrange things. 		george12 (7)
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