Installing Vista 64 In Raid 1 With Partitioned Hd's

[PattayaDavid]

I previously had Vista 32 bit installed in a Raid 1 configuration on two 320GB hard drives.  I am going to replace this with Vista 64 bit when my software arrives.  This time, I was thinking about partitioning my hard drives therefore I have a few questions.

1.  Do I partition my hard drives before setting up Raid 1 configuration?

 

2.  If I setup up Raid 1 first, do I only have to partition the single mirrored drive that appears after setting up Raid which in turn will automatically partition both drives?  

3.  What is the best way to partition my drives for setup in a Raid configuration?  

4.  Lastly, what are your thoughts of partitioning the drives in conjunction to a Raid configuration?  my goal is to separate Vista and my programs from my data.

*  One more question just came to mind;  has anyone every tried to install the operating system (Vista 64bit in my case) on one partition and install and run all programs and data storage from a second partition?

Thanks in advance for your input?

Pattayadavid

[2008bangkok]

I use Raid 1 all the time with a partition for our systems ast work and have no problem..im on the understanding you will do a fresh install of Vista and if that is the case then i would just create the Raid 1 then create the partitions during windows setup which will then create the partition on the mirrored drive.. you should have no problem doing it that way at all

[Simmo]

1. No.

2. Yes.

3. Why do you need to partition at all? It's an outmoded concept - no need with NTFS file system.

4. Use folders to organise your data.

[PattayaDavid]

1. No.

2. Yes.

3. Why do you need to partition at all? It's an outmoded concept - no need with NTFS file system.

4. Use folders to organise your data.

Currently with only a single partition, I have made up data files ie... 1Data, 2 Data etc., but in the past, using Windows XP, I had always used multiple partitions, however I did not set up a Raid 1 configuration during that time.  I am considering the multiple partitions for several reasons.  One, if my computer contracts a virus, malware, trojan etc., I would think that it would only affect the partition that contained the operation system, network and internet connections and program files and not affect the second partition which contained only my stored data.  Is this wrong thinging on my part?

Secondly, I have experience several occasions where there was either a problem or error with Vista, claimed improper shutdown (even though no such thing occurred) and other situations where when I restarted my computer, I received a message indicating basically that the mirroring function of Raid 1 needs to rebuild which can take hours.  If I had, say a 100GB partition for the Vista operating system and installed programs leaving 200+ GB for data storage, would this in fact reduce the time for Raid 1 to rebuild itself?

Since I will be doing a clean install of Vista 64 and may experience some problems, I would hope that I could limit the exposure of the problem area to a smaller partition of my hard drives.  Thanks and I welcome further input.

Lastly, what do you think about installing programs on the second partition?

PattayaDave