SATA vs Old days

[aldebaron]

Currently: MCE w/ 2 SATA drives as RAID Mirror; Upgrading to VISTA

In the 'old days' ( under EIDE) I always set my system w/ Drive C as OS software (OEM MS or Linux) ONLY and a second drive as SW Apps (Program Files) ONLY and, when possible a third drive as SWAP. Grew comfortable with this.

Under SATA, i understand the RAID concept of split file / access time.

But - still like the idea of one drive doing all the os work until apps needed and going to 2nd drive. Also seems less mentally cluttered.

Questions:

#1 Using 1 SATA drive for OS(s) and 1 SATA drive for APPS:

PROS ?

CONS ?

#2 Given above - What would be best scenario for multiple drives or partition for dual boot VISTA / LINUX ?

any help greatly appreciated....PS: will be adding NAS backup storage - - TIA

[S.SubZero]

In the 'old days' ( under EIDE) I always set my system w/ Drive C as OS software (OEM MS or Linux) ONLY and a second drive as SW Apps (Program Files) ONLY and, when possible a third drive as SWAP. Grew comfortable with this.

That's pretty extreme. What's the smallest hard drive they sold even five years ago? 80GB? Did you install say, XP, on an 80GB drive all by itself? That's over 75GB of free space sitting there doing nothing. These days the smallest new drive you can get is what, 160GB or so? You're going to put ONLY an OS on a 160GB drive?

Under SATA, i understand the RAID concept of split file / access time.

? SATA and RAID are not exclusive.. SATA RAID is just like IDE RAID. You aren't required to have RAID if you have SATA. I just built a rig that doesn't have a SATA RAID controller, just 4 plain ol' SATA ports.