A hardware RAID array appears to the OS as a single drive. This drive
can be divided into partitions just as any other drive can be. The type
of partitions you create have no impact on the recoverability of the
array because the recoverability is handled with the hardware, the OS
doesn't even know about it.
> 4. DOES IT MAKE MORE SENSE TO CREATE A RAID 1 MIRROR SET FOR THE C:\
> DRIVE. THE SAME FOR THE F:\FAT DRIVE PARTITION & WHAT'S LEFT OVER AS
> RAID 5 PARTITIONS.
Are you planning to purchase additional drives? To mirror C: and F: and
make E: a RAID 5 array, you will need 7 physical drives because the
arrays are created at the hardware level. A RAID 1 array requires at
least 2 physical drives and a RAID 5 array requires at least 3 physical
drives. I would recommend creating a single RAID 5 array, which, with
your 3 9G drives, would yield 18G of usable disk. You loose the
capacity of one physical drive for the redundancy. Partition this 18G
array into 4 partitions, C:, D:, E:, and F:.
-- Robert W. DownardNetworking & Systems Spec. email: downrw@sncac.snc.eduSt. Norbert College Phone: (920) 403-3971100 Grant Street Fax: (920) 403-4084De Pere, WI 54115-2099