hard drive question?

[its snoodles]

Ok i have 2 western digital 1 TB hard drives they are the new 6G/Bs caviar blacks they both click pretty bad one is running in my computer running my operating system as i am typing this the other is being sent out for a replacement Monday when i get my new drive could i just make a clone of my current hard drive, and would i be able to use it as my primary hard drive without having to reinstall windows and such, while my second hard drive is being sent out and replaced. Btw when i get both drives back and installed in my computer i am planning on running them in raid 0.

 

[medabomb2000]

First off when you do place both drives into RAID 0, you will need to reformat the computer with the third-party raid installation. Meaning you will still need to backup all of your data before hand to enable the RAID. (There may be another way around it. Every time I have set up RAID, I have always done it through the reformat system).

Second, yes you can make an exact copy of your computer (OS/Files/etc). I prefer using Norton's Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost). I have used this on multiple instances. This is also great for backup purposes when you want to just store a DVD-RW of your files in case your hard drives do take a dive.

 

[Indigo]

Yeah, as Medabomb suggests, using Ghost to clone the drive is a great way to keep everything as it is and just move your install over to a new drive.

Any particular reason you want to run in RAID 0? 1TB drives are already pretty spacious, and unless you do a lot of video editing, the RAID 0 is going to be wasted on the effort, not to mention if one drive fails, you lose the data that is on both drives. Just something to be aware of, I run RAID 0 at home as well, but I do it because the drives are smallish and I was tired of shuffling data around (and I do happen to do video work).