New Hard Drives

[DEHawk]

Hello,
I am completely upgrading my computer and need some help please.
Here is what I have right now.
ASUS Deluxe MB
EVGA 7900 GT/GTO Video card
Enermax 650w PSU
AMD Athlon 64bit 3200 CPU
4 IDE Hard Drives
Creative Labs X-Fi Fatality Soundcard
2 DVD/CD drives
4 GB of OCZ ram

Here is my new stuff
EVGA nForce 680i SLI 775 A1 Version MB
XFX GeForce 8800 GTS XXX Video Card
ENERMAX Galaxy Quad 1000w power supply
2GB of Corsair RAM Dominator CM2x1024-8500C5D
Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 2.40 GHz, 8 MB L2 Cache total, 1066 MHz FSB
Windows XP PRO
2 Western Digital 500GB SATA Drives
2 Western Digital 320GB SATA Drives
Creative Labs X-Fi Fatality Soundcard

1st. What is RAID? Is it easy to configure, Do I lose Hard Drive capacity, and if it is easy to configure what setting should I use and why.

2nd. I know that I am going from AMD to Intel and starting from scratch is the way to go from a driver stand point, but how do I transfer all of my programs from the IDE/AMD drive to the new SATA Intel Drive? I really do not want to have to re-install all of my programs. I realize some will have to be re-installed like soundcard drivers, video card drivers etc... but what about programs like Office 2007 and all my contacts and saved e-mails, I-Tunes settings.

3rd. On one of my other Hard Drives not the one with my Operating System I have a few games installed with a lot of addons for the games can I transfer this to my new SATA Drive without having re-install everything?

4th. And last (finally) Another one of my IDE drives I have dedicated just for music, all mp3's and a few I-Tunes videos, how do I transfer this to my new SATA drive?

Here is the configuration I would like to do.
One of the 320GB SATA Hard Drives used for the operating system along with my main programs mentioned above.
The other 320GB SATA Drive used for miscellaneous stuff
One 500GB SATA Drive used as my new music drive
The other 500GB SATA Drive used as my new gaming drive.

I realize this is a long post with a lot of info, but want to be thorough.

Thank you for your time and advice.

[Gizmokid2005]

1. RAID is fairly easy to configure if you know what you are doing. Your motherboard has to have RAID support, or you need a RAID controller to get it working. Here is a good tutorial on RAID and how to set it up.

2. You don't have to start from scratch, but the fact that you are switching hard drives also, means that you will. You will have to reinstall all of your programs on the new hard drives as you will be starting fresh and there is no way to retain all of that information on a fresh installation. In outlook there is an option to export all of your contacts and email, you can use that to transfer the data to the new installation.

3. You will, again, have to reinstall everything. The add-ons will have to be reinstalled if you have to reinstall the games. Chances are most of the programs that you use currently will need to be installed on the new hard drives on the fresh windows installation.

4. This one is much easier than the programs. You can just hook up this particular IDE drive with the rest of the drives in the new computer and move all of the files from the IDE drive to a SATA drive. If there is anything that is actually installed to this drive, it will probably have to be reinstalled also.

[cauzomb]

Hello,
I am completely upgrading my computer and need some help please.
Here is what I have right now.
ASUS Deluxe MB
EVGA 7900 GT/GTO Video card
Enermax 650w PSU
AMD Athlon 64bit 3200 CPU
4 IDE Hard Drives
Creative Labs X-Fi Fatality Soundcard
2 DVD/CD drives
4 GB of OCZ ram

Here is my new stuff
EVGA nForce 680i SLI 775 A1 Version MB
XFX GeForce 8800 GTS XXX Video Card
ENERMAX Galaxy Quad 1000w power supply
2GB of Corsair RAM Dominator CM2x1024-8500C5D
Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 2.40 GHz, 8 MB L2 Cache total, 1066 MHz FSB
Windows XP PRO
2 Western Digital 500GB SATA Drives
2 Western Digital 320GB SATA Drives
Creative Labs X-Fi Fatality Soundcard

1st. What is RAID? Is it easy to configure, Do I lose Hard Drive capacity, and if it is easy to configure what setting should I use and why.

2nd. I know that I am going from AMD to Intel and starting from scratch is the way to go from a driver stand point, but how do I transfer all of my programs from the IDE/AMD drive to the new SATA Intel Drive? I really do not want to have to re-install all of my programs. I realize some will have to be re-installed like soundcard drivers, video card drivers etc... but what about programs like Office 2007 and all my contacts and saved e-mails, I-Tunes settings.

3rd. On one of my other Hard Drives not the one with my Operating System I have a few games installed with a lot of addons for the games can I transfer this to my new SATA Drive without having re-install everything?

4th. And last (finally) Another one of my IDE drives I have dedicated just for music, all mp3's and a few I-Tunes videos, how do I transfer this to my new SATA drive?

Here is the configuration I would like to do.
One of the 320GB SATA Hard Drives used for the operating system along with my main programs mentioned above.
The other 320GB SATA Drive used for miscellaneous stuff
One 500GB SATA Drive used as my new music drive
The other 500GB SATA Drive used as my new gaming drive.

I realize this is a long post with a lot of info, but want to be thorough.

Thank you for your time and advice.

RAID 0 increases access and load times by having data stored on two or more separate drives, so that the computer can access part of the file on one drive and another part of the file on the other drive, at the same time.. The draw backs are that it takes more than one drive; and because the data is stored partially on one drive and partially on the other drive, if one drive breaks, the data on either drive is pretty much useless.. I recommend that if you use RAID 0, you should also use an agressive backup strategy, with external hard drive to copy data to, or add aditional internal drives and connect /configure them to RAID 0+1 "stripe + mirror" This is all setup in the "raid" bios on your motherboard, prior to installing any OS.. To get your motherboard RAID config/drives working in XP; Search out one of the many "nvraid driver slipstream" guides.. You will have to setup a custom xp install CD! if you don't have a burner or friends that can burn a disc for you.. Just use a single drive! The custom slipstream'd NVraid driver/xp install cd is necesarry to unload windows xp IDE drivers, "THEY DON'T WORK RIGHT WITH NVRAID" Also, using the boot floppy driver option does not work either... Windows removes the 3rd party drivers before it finishes installing and you wind up with endless reboots!

[cauzomb]

This nf4 nvraid issue apply's to the 680i raid controller as well;

http://forum.networktechs.com/showpo...8&postcount=18