Introduction
Hello. For those that know not my name or who I am, I'm Rys, Group Technical Editor at HEXUS. As GTE -- or as I prefer to be addressed: Chief of Totally Incredible Technical Stuff -- I know some stuff about some stuff. Mostly I know that intros to articles like this will get me fired, but I also keep my hand in with graphics and what have you, just so I can maintain the illusion that I've got some technical chops.In an effort to make my life a bit easier at work, I've been building my own PC bit by bit over the last few months. You see, the perks of working for a publication like HEXUS mean that I've always got Super Totally Awesome Cool Stuff lying around the office, with which to populate my PC and make it gooooood. However, the downside is that there's always some review or article or other that needs something I happen to be using. I'll get to work and need to swap the CPU out, or change the memory, or use its graphics card, all in the name of helping bring you the goodness HEXUS is famous for.
A while back I decided to suffer that no more, vowing to build up a PC that's entirely composed of my own kit so that I can actually put the case side on for a change without wondering what I'll be removing or swapping next. To cut a long story short, I dug deep into my girlfriend's shoe fund and robbed her blind, splashing out on a Core 2 Duo X6800 instead of some Jimmy Choos, 4GiB of DDR2 instead of Manolo Blahniks, an Intel Bad Axe instead of the vintage Nike Air Jordans she doesn't want anyone to know about. Various other components-for-shoes trades were also made so as to get my big bad beast of a system. It's ohmygodwoweeawesome, I kid you not.
To finish it off, last week I splashed out on some disks. WD Raptors, to be precise. Three of them. To go with the one I've already got. You see, if you build a good PC with access to The Internets, your first duty is to go brag about it online on some forums and run 3DMark, rather than use it for anything useful. My bad, but at least I'm not sponging from the HEXUS.storecupboard any more, working my booty off to pick these bits up over a period of months. Work hard, compute hard, etc.
But you see I've run into a snag. I've now got six SATA disks and eight ports to plug them in to, but across two different disk controllers, and I'm pondering the best way to set them all up. So I thought you guys could maybe help. I've got some data that definitely needs keeping, too, so I'm freaking freaking out trying to figure out how it's all going to work out.
Want to give me a hand, despite the blatant willy waving? Cheers, turn the page!
