Hi Kids (or adults depending on your preference),

I currently run 1x40Gb HDD for boot and 1x80Gb drive for data. As my C:\ is not over 10gb in size this should not be a problem.

I was thinking of moving my boot drive to either IDE or scsi raid (striped for speed).

As i have no onboard controller i would have to get a card that is bootable. My question is.

Could i GHOST my current image and import it on to the raid card. I know its not the best way as a re-install would be better however i really cant be arsed to spend the weeks setting up my PC it would take, as i have alot of software that runs services so it would be a  pita.

I was thinking of installing the raid card first with the drives, installing drives to windows and then importing the ghost image. As long as i get a bootable raid card i should be ok? as does the os not use drivers untill after post / finding the page file. But during the install the part about press F6 to install drivers for boot card makes me think these drivers are put somewhere else.

I am using win2k pro sp3.

The only thing i have going for the SCSI other than its faster is that my normal C:\ will be out of the system so if it goes pear shaped then i can also put the old disk back in and be back to normal.

Cheers
Richard "i hope i made sense" Collyer

most advise against a srtipe for a boot/system drive. the o/s consists primarily of many small files. raid-o is best when used with large files, such as audio & video storage. raid does nothing improve seek/access time. some say it even hurts.

that aside, you would have to try it on a case-by-case basis. personally, i wouldn't do it without a clean install.

if speed is what you want, a single seagate cheetah 15k.3 for your boot/system drive is the way to go. max reliability (more robust drive than any ide), and unbeatable seek/access and str's.  

I dont think i can justify the cost of an seagate cheetah. Been looking at some quatam atlas drives and ebay.

Might stick to 1 scsi boot drive, 1 drive for data and 1 for programs.

if you can't afford a cheetah ($199: http://www.hypermicro.com/store/scsihdd.htm ), I would stick with ide.