PC configuration question

[NigelC]

Your're thinking of RAID1 (mirror). That setup mirrors one drive to a second one. So you have identical files on both drives - it's essentially an automatic backup. RAID0 (stripe) writes part of a file on one drive and the other part of the same file on the second drive. So it's spreading a file across two drives at the same time, which is why the read and write performance is better than with RAID1. But in order to gain the performance advantage, RAID0 gives up data security. So therefore it's very important to have a consistent and reliable backup procedure.

Scott

Any advice on backup? I've decided to go with 2 x 640Gb drives in a RAID 0 configuration, to maximise performance, but what I need is a complete system backup to an external (hopefully eSATA) hard drive. The PC builder I'm ordering from doubts whether the backup utility in Vista 64 Business can cope with backing up 2 drives in RAID 0. Any information on this or should I go with Home Premium and get Norton Ghost?

Planned system to run CS2, CS4 later:
Intel 8400
Asus P5Q
2 x 640GB HD in RAID 0
8GB Corsair DDR2 Ram
Nvidia 9800GT 512MB

[mbalensiefer]

I think that CS4 really wants to run on a 64-bit OS. My system now is 32-bit, and I was running CS3 much faster on it than am I running CS4 now. From Scott's post above where "The Dell ran the test in 4 minutes 55 seconds. My new system ran the test in 31 seconds."; and looking at his specs, I'd assume 64-bit was the key.

[NigelC]

Scott

Any advice on backup? I've decided to go with 2 x 640Gb drives in a RAID 0 configuration, to maximise performance, but what I need is a complete system backup to an external (hopefully eSATA) hard drive. The PC builder I'm ordering from doubts whether the backup utility in Vista 64 Business can cope with backing up 2 drives in RAID 0. Any information on this or should I go with Home Premium and get Norton Ghost?

Planned system to run CS2, CS4 later:
Intel 8400
Asus P5Q
2 x 640GB HD in RAID 0
8GB Corsair DDR2 Ram
Nvidia 9800GT 512MB

Or, more likely, Acronis which seems to be best regarded backup/restore utility

[Scott McGee]

Scott

Any advice on backup? I've decided to go with 2 x 640Gb drives in a RAID 0 configuration, to maximize performance, but what I need is a complete system backup to an external (hopefully eSATA) hard drive. The PC builder I'm ordering from doubts whether the backup utility in Vista 64 Business can cope with backing up 2 drives in RAID 0. Any information on this or should I go with Home Premium and get Norton Ghost?

I can't give you any advise regarding Norton Ghost, Vista's backup utility, or other such backup programs because I don't use them. I backup my 2-drive RAID0 array using Microsoft Synctoy (it's a free download) and the Vista Task Scheduler. Here's my data backup plan:

1) Copy all files from D: (my 2-drive RAID0 array) to E: (an internal hard drive) every day at 3:00 am.
2) Copy all files from D: to Y: (ReadyNAS RAID5 array) every day at 5:00 am.
3) Copy all files from D: to Z: (an external portable drive for offsite storage) every Saturday at 7:00 am.

The main reason I use Synctoy is because it does not encrypt the backed up files. It just simply uses the native copy, rename, and delete commands as necessary. That way, I can browse the backed-up files in Windows Explorer. If I ever need to restore files from backup, I can easily do it in Windows Explorer - I don't need to use a backup program to restore files. I find this system works very well, and you don't have to buy a separate backup/restore program.