I need a strategy to set up my PC's hardrives. Here is the hardware I am using:

AMD 64 3200+
2GB RAM
Leadtek PX6600 GT
(1) 160GB Western Digital Special Edition IDE drive
(2) 320 GB 7200.10 Seagate drives
(1) ReadyNAS Nv with 4 320GB 7200.10 Seagate drives.(RAID X)

I am planning on using the system for video editing, animation, basic graphics, occasional gaming, personal orginaization, web development etc....  It's pretty much my everything system. The only thing it won't be doing is acting as my web server, email server and testbed for server based software.. I have separate system for that.

This is what I am thinking. The NAS is the hub for storage and backups. The 2 Barracudas I was going to configure in RAID 0 for pretty much anything that requires a large swap space and would benefit from RAID 0 such as PhotoShop, Premier and After Effects. The 160GB drive would be used for OS's and programs and likely contain a partition for sharing files between XP and Linux. I would like to have XP installed on this system(not XP 64 since Vista will replace that), the 64-bit version Fedora 5 to run Maya 8 and Motion Builder on and probably Ubuntu for the fun of it. At some point I would want to install Vista when it is released but as a test OS until they get the major bugs worked out.

I am thinking I would want to Ghost my OS's everytime I made updated drivers or installed programs. These images would be stored on the NAS. I would probably want to back up the Linux/XP shared partition since it is likely to contain working files for animation projects I am working on. The same would go for the data on the RAID 0 array(Do you ghost this too or use some other method of daily backup?) What I also want to be able to do is use my web server to upload files remotely and copy them to the NAS for use on my home network(since my web server is not usually on when I am home.)

Can someone give me some feedback whether this is a logical setup? if it is can I get some guidance on partitioning the 160GB drive and setting up my NAS(I think i need to set up volumes.) Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Considering I am usually work with huge PhotoShop files and will be moving into video editing I figured RAID 0 would be best and you are correct that I would be back up files to the NAS. I had thought about only sticking 1 320GB drive in my system and then saving the other for hot swaping in case I had a drive go down on the NAS but in a RAID X config(which is basically RAID 5 with extra capabilities) It wold be the end of the world if I had to order one and wait for it to arrive. of course there is always the chance a second drive goes down.

Out of all of this the real complexity of this setup is the 160GB drive IMHO. It's going to have XP and Fedora 5 on it for sure. I'll probably want to try out Vista when it arrives and I would want to try out Ubunto and maybe even a couple other Linux distros but I won't get overzealous about that right now since I am a Linux noob. So at the bare minimum I want to run XP and Fedora 5. I play games from time to time so I am guessing, according to your strategy page, that I should probably have a partition for them. Then I would need a FAT32 partition to share files between Linux and XP. My question is how much space to give each partition and the procedure to set them up for optimal performance. I've used Partition Magic once and I have never used a Ghosting software so I really don't know where to start. I'm also a bit clueless on how you would setup the NAS. I imagine you can partition that as well. I think the term they use is "volume" but again I don't know for sure.

so it looks like you're going to have to plan your partitions, especially if you wanna run two different versions of linux.

good news is, you have the space.

around here, the word 'dank' has very specific connotations. =)

1. wxp for work stuff/programs, sinced that is prolly where you'll be spending the most time: 30-GB

2. wxp for all normal (non-work) relate functions: 30-GB

3. reserved  for ms vista: 30-GB (you can store other stuff here until vista is released, or try some of the beta versions floaing around.

4. that leaves you with 70-GB. see magoo's guidance for linux for partitioning the rest.

you could put the linux partitions first, if that would be easier for you.

you could either partition the 1st 30-GB section, and install XP and partition the rest later (with windows), or ...

..do everything with fdisk at the beginning (which is what i always do):

http://fdisk.radified.com/

i always put prgms that are larger than a few hundred megs (more than what can fit on a cd) on a separate partition. this way my back-up ghost images remain relatively small.

either, you have to off-load those monsters to another partition, or make the windows system partition bigger (such as 50 or 60 gigs).

do you have any other prgms that require lots of space?

it's not a problem to install prgms to another partition. windows will remember where they are located. you don't have to remember.

there are tricks to trimming the partition size, such as minimizing system restore size, but you shouldn't haver to, with so much space.

like i said, i like to install all my prgms to my windows (system) partition (default), cuz that means i only need to take one image & i get both the system (windows) & all installed prgms, .. *except* for multi-cd prgms, which i install to a different partition, so my images stay small, and it takes LESS TIME to create back-up images.

http://ghost.radified.com/

if you install yer prgms to *another* partition, you need to image/back that up also (separately) .. need 2 stones to kill the back-up bird.

last time i used after effects, i believe it offers you the option of designating the scratch disk manually, so you can change that to the raid stripe, which would be faster.

maybe create a partition at rhe beginning of the stripe specifically for scratch disks. (like 50-GB??)

personally, i would not install 20-GB and 10-GB prgms to my windows partition (for reasons already mentioned), but this is all personal preference.