Help with move to RAID 0 please?

My current single 160Gb 7200 Seagate SATA drive badly needs a reinstallation of XP Pro. I've decided to take the chance to move to RAID 0 and have purchased a second identical drive.

I've performed a complete backup of my existing drive onto a 2nd PC but I have a couple of questions:

1. Do I just plug in my second SATA disc and then construct the array via the BIOS or do I need to completely clear/format my original disk first (I had assumed that the act of constructing the array would destroy the data on it)? If I need to format my existing disc first, how do I do it?

2. I made the mistake of not partitioning my original drive first time around. This time I plan to create separate partitions for the OS; Programme Files; Data Files so I can carry out reinstallations of XP eaisier in the future. What size should my OS partition be to happily accommodate XP Pro?

3. Finally, a colleage mentioned that I should install the swap file onto a separate partition also. I'm looking for circa 3Gb in size (3 x RAM) which he suggested but I can't see how to get this onto a separate partition. I thought if I just create a 3000Mb swap file at the outset, this would suffice. Any pointers please?

Any help/advice gladly received.

Cheers

Peter

 

1. You shouldn't have to format any hard drives prior to constructing a raid array; at least not with any controller I've used.

2. I'd say 3 - 5 GB is about the right size for a WindowsXP partition, depending on whether you're going to be using a Swapfile on it or not. I use 10 GB just to be certain that no problem is going to occur with defragmentation and various other file buildups.

3. The only real benefit of installing the Swapfile on a different partition of the same hard drive as the OS is so that the Swapfile will not become fragmented, and can thus be read and written to as one contiguous chunk at all times. I'd say for optimal performance, however, it would be best to put the Swapfile on yet another hard drive, although any noticable speed gain would most likely be minimal in any case.