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[Holden]

I expect to have a new computer in a couple of days or so. It will have two hard drives each 120g. OS will be MS XP and I plan to use Partition Magic to partition each of the two drives into two partitions each. My Music files on my present computer are about half of them in E:\Music Library and half in F:\Music Library.

Would I be wise to put all these into one partition on the secondary drive or would you put half of them in one partition on the secondary drive and the other half in another partition on the primary drive.

I thought if I divide the music files between two drives, then when adding anything new to the music database, importing them into MC would be faster than having to search through one giant drive.

Are there other issues i should consider? Thanks for any suggestions you may have.

Holden.

[Mastiff]

I have it spread over three partitions (three drives on one of the computers, two on the backup), and that is not a problem. I right click on the new directories and choose Import under the MC heading there.

[Robert Taylor]

How about using your old hard drive as your C drive, and using RAID to stripe across the two new drives??? I use a 4 X 80Gb partition in RAID 5 (striped with parity) across them.

Then you will see good performance gains, without using partitions.

Obviously, there is no real point in splitting a new drive into two partitions, and having music files in both partitions on one drive.

Also, if your new motherboard doesn't have hardware RAID onboard, you can use software RAID built in to Windows XP (I have no experience with software RAID under XP, but hardware would have to be better performance wise)...

[fex]

I have it spread over three partitions (three drives on one of the computers, two on the backup), and that is not a problem...

Same here. Use one of two interal drives just for media (120g, two partitions), one external (250) and another external one just for backups. No problems or 'delay'.

[Jaguu]

Also, if your new motherboard doesn't have hardware RAID onboard, you can use software RAID built in to Windows XP (I have no experience with software RAID under XP, but hardware would have to be better performance wise)...

Software Raid is a thing of the past unless you run Server versions of Windows 2000/2003. It was implemented on NT4.0 workstations and you could even upgrade to Windows 2000. But once you broke the Software Raid in Windows 2000 it was gone. You cannot have Software Raid on Windows 2000/XP  any longer.

I had Hardware Raid 1 but dropped it. If you ever had a controller crash you know why. I prefer replicating my data disk (D: with user data and media data) to an equivalent disk on a second pc. In the case of a pc crash I just switch pc and work with my backup pc. Just need to redirect the My Documents folder to the replicated data folder and can go on working. I bought to GigaEthernet cards for fast data transfer between the 2 pc's. I mainly use my backup pc for video conversion (DivX) and for keeping up with Windows 2000 know how.

Getting paranoid I could have a second external backup disk or put the disk on my backup pc on an external case. Probably having an external backup disk connected via USB2.0/Firewire would give the equivalent safety except that you need to restore all the files back to disk.

[xen-uno]

Striping across (2) disks will give you a nice boost in I/O, but actually halves the statistical MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) of the array. If you lose one drive, the data in the other is history, too. I would address them as (2) separate logical drives before I would stripe them (though I have a server here running a striped, two drive SCSI array). For data protection, RAID Level 1 (mirroring) or 5 (striped w/ parity) is the way to go, but you need a minimum of (3) disks for 5. Jaguu apparently was cursed, but controller failures can happen with onboard IDE's as well, which could and often do take the hard drives with it.

10^-27

[Jaguu]

If you are an IT professional, it is a high risk to have one pc only - it is a single point of failure.

If your car breaks down, you go to your garage and get a spare car for a few days. If your pc breaks down, you won't.

[Robert Taylor]

Ahh! I was unaware (not having used it), that the mirroring / striping features in the disk manager were not actually available under XP. There is a warning in the help for disk manager which specifies this.

Xen raises a good point (sorry neglected to mention this), that using multiple drives striped (with no parity) means that if one of the striped drives fail, the whole lot goes down the toilet.

I use a twin 60Gb striped pair as a video workspace (ie. no important files kept there), so I don't really care if this partition dies as a result of disk failure.

Really, disk is so cheap these days that mirroring is an option for backups (or copying the whole shebang to another drive which you then store somewhere safe)...

[zevele10]

Really, disk is so cheap these days-=-=-

Not everywhere.
Here , and  in France ,in UK drives are not cheap.
And ,i'am sure it is the same in all countrys in Europe.
I have a new Westen Digital 250 since 2 or3 weeks.
The cheaper i found was $400+

[Holden]

Thank you, guys (gals?) for taking the time to respond. I've noted each message and they have all been a help. Got word Thursday afternoon that the new computer will be delivered Friday morning - 5-7 hours from now.

I have a Maxtor 40g external drive, but realize I must get something with more capacity to back up all my files. I've been backing up crucial data to CDs but have not got all my music backed up. Dangerous, I know.