Need advice on storage options

[Trice]

Hey guys I am in sort of a bind. I currently have (2) 74GB Raptors in RAID 0, and a WD 300 GB "Backup" drive. TBH I havent seen a great increase in speed, I know the speed is good due to the Raptors, I just dont know if having 2 of them in RAID is a good option. Here's my thinking. Ditch one of them, and run my OS and Apps off the single 74 Raptor I would have left, and if necessary use the Backup drive also. Here is my current usage.

My Raptors hold both OS and Apps and the OS is on its own partition as follows:

C (OS) is a 12 GB partition with 5.36 GB free (Using 6.63 which includes the 2GB swap)
D (Apps) is a 126 GB partition with 101.2 GB free (Using 24.8 GB)
E (Backup) is a single 279 GB partition with 203 Free (Using 76.2 GB)

My total usage is 107.63, but only 31.43 of the available 126 GB on the (2) Raptors

So what do you think I should do? I dont use a floppy anymore so its a bit of a PITA to have to clunker up a floppy setup to get drivers to load when I format (which is going to be soon, hence the question)

Thanks for any help and sorry for the long winded discussion.

[BlueBiker]

Your system is rationally setup as is, with only your reinstallables on the fast but vulnerable stripe set. Your files are all on the outer cylinders of the drives where it's fastest and requires a minimum of head travel. Should be running real nice!

If the problem is a lack of floppy to provide installation drivers, you can probably find one locally on Craig's List for $5 or so. Alternately, your OS/BIOS might be able to load them from a USB drive.

Do you want to go faster? You could create a small partition on the storage drive for the swapfile so the Raptors are less distracted. You could put temp files there too, depending on where the main disk activity occurs in the programs you use.

Concerned about reliability? It's true that you're more likely to lose your OS and Apps in the RAID 0, but you do have that 3rd drive to store anything you really want to keep.

Do you have an offsite backup of the important files on your storage drive? It's a good idea in case of fire, theft, etc. You could reconfigure Raptor 1 to have OS & Apps, Raptor 2 to have (most of) your storage, and put the 300GB in an external enclosure that you connect occasionally for backups.