If your worried about losing data or whatnot, I would simply have a harddrive (SATA because its clearly faster than IDE) for the OS and such, then have everything condensed onto one large drive set as a slave. Then, if your still worried about it, get two ($80x2 wouldn't be that bad for security and piece of mind) and run them in RAID1 config. Exact mirror of the first that way if one fails, you always have the second. If you go that route though, theres really no need for one for the OS and such though.

Yes, that would be the best way to go. The 80gb os drive I use are the sata drives. It is time consuming transfering data to a different HD. Usually a xcopy command or two ran in a batch file overnight. Even if it is from one sata to antoher sata connected to the mb the large files take some time.

On the servers were run the raid (raid5 I believe) through the array controller. Is that the same way for a desktop? Meaning you need a controller that can do it? Is it built into todays mb or is a seperate controller needed?

I too have been shopping around for a new PC (half-heartedly though). Trying to determine goals and what I want out of it, I came up with this:

To be able to totally hand-pick your components that you can overclock, and assemble them yourself, shopping at Newegg, TigerDirect, etc is the best route. The trouble with this is you kinda have to know what works with what. Pretty easy, just read carefully. Also, the OS doesn't come with it, so that's an extra cost; which can be substantial if you want Windows. If I do this, I usually make sure to get components that aren't obsolete. Yeah, you can get a good price on a mobo, but it might only be capable of running the latest of a dead line of CPU socket type. Also, don't skimp on the PSU. Buy bigger than you need so you can upgrade the CPU, video, etc down the road.

Or, you can get an HP, Dell, etc system that use OEM stuff for a decent price. These systems work as-is but offer little to no overclocking. And from experience, any upgrading has to be done carefully because of mobo support and power supply limitations. Speaking of PSUs: these systems usually come with the bare minimum needed to run these systems from what I've seen.

Or, you can go to someplace like Alienware (which apparently is now run/owned by Dell) or IbuyPower (a place I've been looking at recently) and pick from a wole list of "aftermarket" parts. You might pay a little more, but at least everything works together guaranteed.

When shopping for the CPU, look for one that is at the sweet spot for price vs performace. This tends to be 2-3 models from the top. As long as the mobo supports the faster CPU for future upgrade later on (when the price becomes reasonable), there is no need to spend double the price for a marginally faster processor, at least to me.

As far as a MAC goes: My fiancee has one and it is pretty nice I guess. I personally don't like the way the OS works in general. Besides, it's just a pretty version of Linux anyway. It can run some games in a virtual environment, but that's just a PITA unless you like that kind of thing. You could also dual boot Windows and Linux/Mac, but that's a PITA as well. Mac-heads argue that they are better for graphics. I really don't see it because the same way overpriced (Adobe) software is available in Windows too. Mac heads also argue about the lack of viruses on the Mac. Well, I feel that's only because there are fewer of them out there and virus authors want to make the biggest effect with the largest computer base. And anyway, as long as you have a decent firewall and antivirus spyware protection, and don't do stupid things with the computer, it runs malware free. But the biggest thing to me is that there is VASTLY more software out there for Windows OS. Every time she wants to do something other than "work" stuff, we have to use my Windows PC because it actually does everything.

Thanks BrianG. Good info. I guess I am going to have to ask now. What is overclocking?

Overclocking is simply put, getting much more out of your CPU that it would at default speeds. Say, you have three choices of CPU's, a 2.8Ghz, 3Ghz, 3.2Ghz and the costs of each are 180, 210, and 300 respectively. Now, obviously the two cheaper ones have much better performance/dollar. So, if you do your buying right, get a decent motherboard and a good heatsink, you can drastically increase the clock speed or "Ghz" of your CPU. So, seeing as all three of these CPU's are basically identical, except for the fact that they are binned differently as far as quality (how they would handle high heat, high stress situations), the higher clocked ones can handle just a little bit more, but not much really. So, when you overclock, you can either OC as far as you can on default CPU core volts (which is pretty easy these days), or you can increase the core volts and take it much further, provided you have a good heatsink.

So, take the $210 3ghz chip for example, relatively comparable what you would get with a real CPU these days, you could increase clock speed to 3.6ghz to 3.8ghz (depends on your luck, as not all components are made equal). Now if you want to take it further, you can increase core volts from say 1.25 default volts to 1.35 volts (or vcore), then, you should be able to increase the speed up to 4.0ghz, or even 4.2ghz.

So you can see that by getting a lower end chip and getting a better heatsink instead with the money you save, you can increase the clock speed far past the most expensive chip model.

I would recommend a heatsink such as the Noctua NH-U12P, as it is very quiet and performs very well.

I used to overclock my rig a while back, but found it didn't really give me all that much more perceived performance for the heat it produced. Not to mention possibly reducing the lifespan of the CPU. Raising the speed and maybe core voltage (increased to make the CPU stable at the overclocked speed) will require more power and create more heat. It depends on what you plan to do with it: are you going to be running games or applications where every last MHz counts? If the answer is yes, then overclocking makes sense. If the answer is no, then you don't gain a whole lot other than faster benchmarks.

And it's not just about the CPU; some motherboards are more "overclocking friendly" than others. Will the switching FETs be able to handle the increase in current that an overclocked CPU will pull? Will the rest of the board remain stable at the higher speed? This is where research in the mobo you are looking at is needed. Some boards may say the can overclock to whatever level, but read user reviews to know the true story.

Reviews are everything yeah. I think if you don't even know what overclocking is, the the safest bet is to only use stock volts and OC as far as you can, as this does not increase power and heat much at all, it's when you increase core voltage when heat dissipation increases, and fast, as it's exponential to the voltage you are putting through it.

You don't really want to do what I do with overclocking, as I have a core 2 duo E8400 overclocked from the stock 3.0ghz to a very large OC of 4.2Ghz. Just as an example of how fast the heat dissipation can increase on the high end, going from 4.2ghz to 4.4ghz increases loaded system power consumption from ~200watts, to a massive 290watts. That is an extra 90watts extra from the little CPU cores, and for 200mhz extra , is NOT worth it, as you can see. If you are wondering how I measure power consumption, I have a wall outlet power meter.