Building a box for a Net drive

So I've been thinking about building a box for a net drive at home for
photography and graphic art storage and such. I have an ASUS A7V600X-E board
here and a 2400 Athlon and three 256M sticks of various PC2100 and 2700 RAM.
I was going to put Windows 2000 Pro on an IDE 8.4G or 10G drive and put two
640G WD Blue or two 750G WD Green drives on the two SATA ports.

Originally I was going to RAID them (even though I've never done that) and
map them as a net drive on two of the XP Home machines here (never done that
either). I read a review on the Green drives that suggests they don't like
RAID and the constant running shortens the life span and makes extra heat
(and noise to cool them). So I was thinking that I have a copy of Acronis
True Image 9.0 here that's not doing anything and wondered if I could just
map one of the drives and somehow tell Acronis to keep them mirrored
incrementally every day thereby keeping a safe copy and yet working them
less and getting another 110Gigs for the same money.

Is that a better option?

Anything else I need to think about?

"Jess Fertudei" wrote in message
...
So I've been thinking about building a box for a net drive at home for
photography and graphic art storage and such. I have an ASUS A7V600X-E
board here and a 2400 Athlon and three 256M sticks of various PC2100 and
2700 RAM. I was going to put Windows 2000 Pro on an IDE 8.4G or 10G drive
and put two 640G WD Blue or two 750G WD Green drives on the two SATA
ports.

Originally I was going to RAID them (even though I've never done that) and
map them as a net drive on two of the XP Home machines here (never done
that either). I read a review on the Green drives that suggests they don't
like RAID and the constant running shortens the life span and makes extra
heat (and noise to cool them). So I was thinking that I have a copy of
Acronis True Image 9.0 here that's not doing anything and wondered if I
could just map one of the drives and somehow tell Acronis to keep them
mirrored incrementally every day thereby keeping a safe copy and yet
working them less and getting another 110Gigs for the same money.

Is that a better option?

Anything else I need to think about?


I'm not sure, but I think you'll have to upgrade your acronis software. I
know I had an earlier version of acronis (9, I believe) that wouldn't play
nicely with SATA drives. I've got version 11 of Acronis now, no problems
with it and SATA drives.

It's your build, and I haven't priced hard drives recently, but to keep it
simple, I'd probably get an IDE drive of about 500G or so, then buy the
largest SATA drive I could find. Create two partitions on the IDE drive,
one 10GB, and the other using all the remaining space. Put your OS on the
IDE drive on the small partition (of course). Then create two partitions
on the SATA drive. One small partition, say 10Gigs. Use Acronis to backup
drive C: to that small partition on the SATA drive periodically. Do this
backup manually, whenever you think about it. (not as critical to do
automatic backups of this) Then set acronis to backup the OTHER partition
on the SATA drive automatically, to the large partition of the IDE drive.
That's how I'd handle it. -Dave

"Jess Fertudei" wrote in message
...
So I've been thinking about building a box for a net drive at home for
photography and graphic art storage and such. I have an ASUS A7V600X-E
board here and a 2400 Athlon and three 256M sticks of various PC2100 and
2700 RAM. I was going to put Windows 2000 Pro on an IDE 8.4G or 10G drive
and put two 640G WD Blue or two 750G WD Green drives on the two SATA
ports.

Originally I was going to RAID them (even though I've never done that) and
map them as a net drive on two of the XP Home machines here (never done
that either). I read a review on the Green drives that suggests they don't
like RAID and the constant running shortens the life span and makes extra
heat (and noise to cool them). So I was thinking that I have a copy of
Acronis True Image 9.0 here that's not doing anything and wondered if I
could just map one of the drives and somehow tell Acronis to keep them
mirrored incrementally every day thereby keeping a safe copy and yet
working them less and getting another 110Gigs for the same money.

Is that a better option?

Anything else I need to think about?




Check that to read A7V600X (no E... thinking about another board)

"Dave" wrote in message
...

"Jess Fertudei" wrote in message
...
So I've been thinking about building a box for a net drive at home for
photography and graphic art storage and such. I have an ASUS A7V600X-E
board here and a 2400 Athlon and three 256M sticks of various PC2100 and
2700 RAM. I was going to put Windows 2000 Pro on an IDE 8.4G or 10G drive
and put two 640G WD Blue or two 750G WD Green drives on the two SATA
ports.

Originally I was going to RAID them (even though I've never done that)
and map them as a net drive on two of the XP Home machines here (never
done that either). I read a review on the Green drives that suggests they
don't like RAID and the constant running shortens the life span and makes
extra heat (and noise to cool them). So I was thinking that I have a copy
of Acronis True Image 9.0 here that's not doing anything and wondered if
I could just map one of the drives and somehow tell Acronis to keep them
mirrored incrementally every day thereby keeping a safe copy and yet
working them less and getting another 110Gigs for the same money.

Is that a better option?

Anything else I need to think about?


I'm not sure, but I think you'll have to upgrade your acronis software. I
know I had an earlier version of acronis (9, I believe) that wouldn't play
nicely with SATA drives. I've got version 11 of Acronis now, no problems
with it and SATA drives.

It's your build, and I haven't priced hard drives recently, but to keep it
simple, I'd probably get an IDE drive of about 500G or so, then buy the
largest SATA drive I could find. Create two partitions on the IDE drive,
one 10GB, and the other using all the remaining space. Put your OS on the
IDE drive on the small partition (of course). Then create two
partitions on the SATA drive. One small partition, say 10Gigs. Use
Acronis to backup drive C: to that small partition on the SATA drive
periodically. Do this backup manually, whenever you think about it. (not
as critical to do automatic backups of this) Then set acronis to backup
the OTHER partition on the SATA drive automatically, to the large
partition of the IDE drive. That's how I'd handle it. -Dave

Thanks.
I'd like to avoid any system that compresses these files, if possible.
Mirrored or redundant drives would be ideal for this situation. I will have
to look into the True Image 9.0 and how it interacts with SATA, I guess. I
need to keep the price down on this and will RAID if I *have* to as opposed
to buying more software. I guess I could find two IDE drives but that limits
their future and I would like to keep them as near to 700G or higher as I
can afford right now. We do a lot of this work and are filling drives too
quickly. Unfortunately we have a recession thing going or I would spend a
lot more... it's very important to me.

Thanks again!

On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:13:52 -0400, Jess Fertudei rearranged some
electrons to say:

"Dave" wrote in message
...

"Jess Fertudei" wrote in message
...
So I've been thinking about building a box for a net drive at home for
photography and graphic art storage and such. I have an ASUS A7V600X-E
board here and a 2400 Athlon and three 256M sticks of various PC2100
and 2700 RAM. I was going to put Windows 2000 Pro on an IDE 8.4G or
10G drive and put two 640G WD Blue or two 750G WD Green drives on the
two SATA ports.

Originally I was going to RAID them (even though I've never done that)
and map them as a net drive on two of the XP Home machines here (never
done that either). I read a review on the Green drives that suggests
they don't like RAID and the constant running shortens the life span
and makes extra heat (and noise to cool them). So I was thinking that
I have a copy of Acronis True Image 9.0 here that's not doing anything
and wondered if I could just map one of the drives and somehow tell
Acronis to keep them mirrored incrementally every day thereby keeping
a safe copy and yet working them less and getting another 110Gigs for
the same money.

Is that a better option?

Anything else I need to think about?


I'm not sure, but I think you'll have to upgrade your acronis software.
I know I had an earlier version of acronis (9, I believe) that
wouldn't play nicely with SATA drives. I've got version 11 of Acronis
now, no problems with it and SATA drives.

It's your build, and I haven't priced hard drives recently, but to keep
it simple, I'd probably get an IDE drive of about 500G or so, then buy
the largest SATA drive I could find. Create two partitions on the IDE
drive, one 10GB, and the other using all the remaining space. Put your
OS on the IDE drive on the small partition (of course). Then create
two partitions on the SATA drive. One small partition, say 10Gigs.
Use Acronis to backup drive C: to that small partition on the SATA
drive periodically. Do this backup manually, whenever you think about
it. (not as critical to do automatic backups of this) Then set
acronis to backup the OTHER partition on the SATA drive automatically,
to the large partition of the IDE drive. That's how I'd handle it.
-Dave

Thanks.
I'd like to avoid any system that compresses these files, if possible.
Mirrored or redundant drives would be ideal for this situation. I will
have to look into the True Image 9.0 and how it interacts with SATA, I
guess. I need to keep the price down on this and will RAID if I *have*
to as opposed to buying more software. I guess I could find two IDE
drives but that limits their future and I would like to keep them as
near to 700G or higher as I can afford right now. We do a lot of this
work and are filling drives too quickly. Unfortunately we have a
recession thing going or I would spend a lot more... it's very important
to me.

Thanks again!

RAID IS NOT A BACKUP STRATEGY! You have to do backups as well.