Setting up and formatting for xp

I have(had) a Dell Demension Gen 5 with xp media center 2005. It had 2 internal 160gb drives which were raid and sata......
one of them died.
i brought the pc into a very good local shop and he was able to recover 100% of my stuff.
I just bought a 320gb external eSata firewire etc....
so, when I pick up my machine i will now have one internal 160gb drive and a 320gb external which came formatted for ntfs.
I will now do a brand new clean install, and reformat/partition the internal drive and install xp media center..
I just wanted some advice as to what the best plan is to set this all up.
i was thinking of using the internal drive as c:\ partitioned for xp and some of the programs that i have running at all times.
then use the external for basically everything else, including backups of the internal.
is this the right way to go?
any ideas that anyone can add to make this better?
also, like i said the new external came formatted for ntfs. should i format the internal in FAT??
thank you all in advance

 

Sounds almost identical to the setup I have. I've partitioned my internal hard drive so that I have 40GB C: drive for Windows and the programs I install (as this amount should be ample unless I install A LOT of modern games), and the rest (D: drive) is for files. I then move My Documents folder to the D: drive, and make sure I save everything there.

Then I created a simple script so that when I shut down the computer, everything on the D: drive is backed up to the external drive automatically.

When designing a backup system, I consider the "scales of disaster"

The first scale would be OS corruption/damage. I've protected myself from this by separating the OS from data with the partition.

The second scale would be hardware failure. I've protected myself by making redundant copies of my data on multiple drives. If my internal drive dies, and the data is not recoverable, I have the backup copies on the external drive.

The next scale would be if the entire system were destroyed, say in a fire, and I currently don't have protection against this. I don't consider my data valuable enough.

However, if you are concerned, look into offsite backups. There are a few ways to approach it. There are services online that you can upload your data to. Others might backup to tape, and put the tape in another location.

Also NTFS > FAT - don't go back.

 

I run a very similar setup too I have a main 250g windows drive and 2x500gs that I store downloads saved game data my music and pics on along with my documents folder etc. saved me a time or 2 when old main drive died and definately ntfs as mada mitty pointed out. Its a much better format(p.s. storing info on 1 drive and other is back up)

 

Thank you for your help.....
right now i am debating whether to use RAID as part of the setup..either RAID level 0 or level 1.
But I am not happy about the negatives of RAID...
I think i was setup with RAID before because I mistakenly assumed that drives c:\ and d:\ were actually the 2 different physical pieces of hardware. but, with RAID, it seems as if they are just names that the OS gives, and folders, files, data spans accross both physical drives.
thats why even though I had xp on a partition on drive c:\ and it was my 2nd physical drive that died, i could not boot into windows...
now i had a reliable store recover all of my data and i bought the Seagate Free Agent 320 GB external usb/firewire/eSata drive..
They will give me my recovered data on that and then i have a clean, free 160 GB internal to partition for xp and use the rest for the programs i run all time. I will use the external for everything else plus storage and a place to copy everything of importance on c:\ (internal) everyday (yeah, hopefully).
I will do both in ntfs. and partition off 40 GB on the internal for xp as you advised..
I guess that is a good enough start to all of this......
I was told that i must never forget that if i turn off my pc, to always turn off the external, otherwise it is vulnerable...

am i correct in staying away from RAID because of the fact that it spans across both physical drives?
I also read that if you were to use RAID both drives should be the same size.
i now have a 160 and a 320, so it appears that i will be wasting alot of space....
any other advice is appreciated