RAID 1 with VIA 8237 SATA and Seagate 200Gig Barracudas

[stix_kua]

Okay,

So i finally got to building my file-server. But before I get down adn dirty to actually build I wanted a few questions answered or rather I wanted re-assurance from my fellow SysOpt members as I respect your opinions and knowledge so very much.

From what I know and understand this is how I should set it up:

1: Plug in both Serial ATA drives (both data and power)
2: Get into BIOS and setup RAID Array (RAID 1)
3: After RAID array is confiured and readied, restart computer.
4: Begin Windows installtion and when asked for any other drivers (press F6 with floppy disk inserted)
5: Load the drivers...
6: Proceed to install Windows...
7: Done!

Is this correct?

A few other questions too, for a RAID 1 array would it be wiser to use Fat32 or NTFS. This is going to be a file-server for a small network. i think NTFS would be fine. Any thoughts on this?

[stix_kua]

Oh and one more question:

How would I recover my data if the primary drive fails?

From what I understand to be correct, I simply unplug the dead drive and move the Secondary drive into its place.

The question is do I hten destroy the array and rebuild when a replacement drive comes or do I leave it as is and just add the replacement drive?

[Midknyte]

you should be able to just install everythng on one drive, then mirror over to the second drive. that's what you would have to do in case one of the drives died.

you could either switch the cables (secondary becomes the primary) or you could modify the boot.ini. I think it would be easiest just to switch the cable with sata, since there is only one drive per cable. it's harder with scsi or ide.

you should use ntfs, since you can assign permissions with it.

[stix_kua]

Thanks Midknyte.

[stix_kua]

Well that was easy enough...