Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions XP Pro Software Raid 5, any input?

Thanks Dan, yep I found that article the other day. I'm still tossing around my options, possibly just setting up a mirroring scenario. Again, I just plan to use this as a HTPC so I won't be running many applications other than TheaterTek DVD software and the OS itself, which would reside on my primary drive. I was planning on using the extra hard drives for ripping my CD's and possibly some of my DVD collection so I don't have to get up often to swap out the DVD's in the player. I also plan to add an HDTV tuner OTA card at some point. Not sure about adding a PVR card yet.

Maybe my best bet would be to use like a Raid 1/mirrored environment?

Thanks again.

Or just have two drives and periodically copy one to the other. Can you tell I have had to fix more than my share of mirrored / RAIDed systems in my days ?

Um...sirquack. You don't need a PVR card. If I understand correctly, you are meaning a Personal Video Recorder card?

An HDTV card does that one and the same.

Windows XP Media Center has an integrated TV tuner program which can automatically record TV shows with a TV guide and has integrated DVD software as well as a music playback system. You're going to want that as the operating system instead of numerous other programs.

Also, you can get a program such as Norton Ghost to automatically back up your most important data onto a dedicated backup drive. That's what I do, and I can still use the extra space on the backup drive for other things too.

Hard drives don't just die all of the sudden anymore, they are becoming more and more reliable. They are much more likely to die in high stress environments, such as a server, which is why servers use RAID much more than desktops do.