Q about HDD's, and other stuff

croSSeduP

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Bit of a noob questions here...
My computer has 4 hard drive volumes. One of them is a RAID0, one is a 64 gig SSD that I have W7 installed to and is C:, and the others are for storage. I'd like to install W10, but I don't have enough room on my C: drive to do so. When I go to "uninstall or change program" there is no listing of where each program is installed. How do I find this info? Also, ideally, I'd like to format every disk, set ALL my HDD's in RAID0 and just have my SSD as my OS drive and background programs drive. Is there a way I can do this w/o losing all my data? Thank you for any help!
 
Nooo, don't put all your hdds in RAID0 :omg: if one dies it'll take out ALL of the others. If you've got 3 or more HDDs I'd suggest RAID5 if you can - that way a disk can fail and you won't lose all your data. You'll not have quite as much storage space, but running them all in raid0 is just asking for trouble

To be honest, 64GB for your main drive isn't that much at all - I'd say it's very worth your time to upgrade to a higher capacity SSD - even 240GB drives are selling for just $100 these days, or a 120GB drive for $50
 
Haven't heard of RAID5. But that was an "aside" question. Yes, 64 gig drive is small... I don't want to straight up replace it. What about getting a 250 gig SSD and RAID0 it and the the 64 gig? I'm more concerned about finding room on my present SSD and installing W10.
 
A raid configuration is always limited by the smallest/slowest drive. So if you use a 64GB drive with a 250GB drive in RAID0, you'll end up with 128GB total space. THat'd be a waste of your new 250GB drive

If you'd like to see what's taking up all the space on your 64GB drive you can use a program like TreeSize
 
Just a couple cents of an opinion here if I may.

If this computer is a personal computer then if I were you I would drop the Raid period. Personal PC's have no reason to have one. I know this will likely cause an uproar with many but there really isn't other than to be able to say you have one. Just uses up resources.

Wiztree is also a nice little utility to track down what is using up drive space....

There are free programs out there for home users that don't require bootable media etc...i.e. they are super easy to use, just need storage like an external hard drive...Macrium Reflect is one of them, that makes an image of the drive so that you can put your computer back to the way it was. Image the primary OS drive and you have an excellent backup of your primary system.
 
Haven't heard of RAID5. But that was an "aside" question. Yes, 64 gig drive is small... I don't want to straight up replace it. What about getting a 250 gig SSD and RAID0 it and the the 64 gig? I'm more concerned about finding room on my present SSD and installing W10.

Why don't you want to just replace it with a larger / better performing drive?

You can clone your existing drive over to the new SSD with something like a CloneZilla LiveCD.

Just a couple cents of an opinion here if I may.

If this computer is a personal computer then if I were you I would drop the Raid period. Personal PC's have no reason to have one. I know this will likely cause an uproar with many but there really isn't other than to be able to say you have one. Just uses up resources.
+1

I don't really recommend RAID for home users unless you actually have a reason to need it. Also, RAID != backup solution, RAID is just a redundancy option.
 
I have to say though, as far as RAID on a user desktop goes, I don't see any reason why (if you already have 3-4 1TB hdds) they wouldn't benefit from a raid. Yes it's not a backup, but it *will* mean if a drive fails they won't lose their data (which they would if not in a raid). It will also provide read/write speed increases, who doesn't like that!

Maybe years ago I would have advised against it, but these days setting up a software raid is easy and reliable - given the benefits listed above I'd say there's definitely not "no reason" to have one at home. Arguably unnecessary perhaps :p but still useful/practical
 
I have to say though, as far as RAID on a user desktop goes, I don't see any reason why (if you already have 3-4 1TB hdds) they wouldn't benefit from a raid. Yes it's not a backup, but it *will* mean if a drive fails they won't lose their data (which they would if not in a raid). It will also provide read/write speed increases, who doesn't like that!

Maybe years ago I would have advised against it, but these days setting up a software raid is easy and reliable - given the benefits listed above I'd say there's definitely not "no reason" to have one at home. Arguably unnecessary perhaps :p but still useful/practical

With online backup what it is and the cost of drives as low as it is I would suggest the online backup and/or the external drive for backup purposes. Say getting unlimited online backup for around $50 or so a year. Using Macro Reflect on periodic occasion doing an image and saving to an external are much better ways for backup than having a raid in my opinion. Personally I've had to save more people from losing info from a failing/failed raid on a home computer than I've had saved by having a raid on a home computer. That's just my experience though I am sure you are right in other cases ;)
 
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