[coliander]

I'm planning on building a new computer which is going to be used exclusively for home recording/multitracking. My plan is to buy an IDE HDD to run the OS and Applications from, then set up a SATA RAID configuration using 4 hard drives and use these drives solely for recording/streaming/storing audio files.
Basically I want the computer to show 2 drives. The IDE system drive as C: and the RAID array as D: or whatever.
Since the computer is being built from scratch, is it possible to install the OS, Applications, e.t.c. on the IDE drive. Then add the SATA drives and set up the RAID array at a later date? :4-dontkno

 

[linderman]

Most definetly you can do that.

The most STABLE configuration is using the IDE drive as your boot drive / the sata drive is a much faster solution but its by far buggier than IDE configs / so I think you have the most stable config in mind

IDE drive for the OS and a raid config for fast data use / I have found that you need to adopt good back-up principles with sata drives / they seem at this point in their evolution to get buggy at times / there could be instances when you will attempt to access your files only to find the drives being reported as RAW or inaccessible and requiring formatting etc / they just plain wig out at times / this is no big thing as long as you keep regular back-ups to an INTERNAL IDE drive (USB externals can be just as flaky) The MOST reliable drives are the internal IDE drives, not the fastest and certainly raid configs are awesome in their capabilities but IDE should be the spinal cord of your back-up & boot-up procedures.

regards

joe

 

[crazijoe]

then set up a SATA RAID configuration using 4 hard drives and use these drives solely for recording/streaming/storing audio files.

I hope this is going to be configured as a RAID 1, RAID 0-1 or better yet a RAID 5. Because RAID 0 and "storing audio files" doesn't work good together.