Best use for a second hard disk / disk imaging

[geokes]

I'm a BSD newb, installing 6.4 as a FAMP server.
My 1U Supermicro server accommodates two SATA hard drives.
What would be the best use for the second one?
I would avoid hardware RAID, because if the mobo fails, I won't have access to a similar controller to access the data.
I'm looking for performance here, not fault tolerance.

For full system backup I would like to use a disk imaging tool.
So far I tried Acronis Enterprise and it worked, except for one thing: can't resize partitions.(a major convenience upgrading my Windows servers with larger drives). Any tools (including commercial) can clone BSD drives and resize partitions?

[graudeejs]

backup with dump/restore
https://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=185


you can mirror 1st drive, that way you will increase performance when reading files

[none]

wouln't be stripe to give performance ?

none

[geokes]

stripe would increase performance, but I avoid using RAID with controllers built in to the motherboard.Unlike an add on controller, on-board can't be moved to a different server to read the data easily.
In the Windows world, moving the temp folder and/or swap file to a different physical disk will increase performance noticeably.

I take none, for no imaging software is able to re-size BSD partitions.
So what is the solution if I want to replace my 36GB hard drive with a 250GB?

[graudeejs]

stripe would increase performance, but I avoid using RAID with controllers built in to the motherboard.Unlike an add on controller, on-board can't be moved to a different server to read the data easily.
In the Windows world, moving the temp folder and/or swap file to a different physical disk will increase performance noticeably.

I take none, for no imaging software is able to re-size BSD partitions.
So what is the solution if I want to replace my 36GB hard drive with a 250GB?

as i suggested before use
backup with dump/restore
https://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=185

you need to backup date, modify disk (either with sysinstall, or sysinstall and bsdlabel, or fdisk and bsdlabel), and then restore backups on new filesystems.

The process is VERY similar to this:
https://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=184

[geokes]

if I had the choice between the above method and a boot CD (ghost, trueimage etc.) I'd say the CDs well worth the money...

[none]

stripe would increase performance, but I avoid using RAID with controllers built in to the motherboard.Unlike an add on controller, on-board can't be moved to a different server to read the data easily.

I do agree. I tend to use in these situations software raid from FreeBSD, as I have now ...

none