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Best Drive Configuration

M

Mr. Frodo

n00b
Joined
Feb 25, 2006
Messages
12
What's the best configuration for the drives I have? This is for a new setup:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+
ECS nForce3-939 1.0A
BFG 6800GT (Overclocked to Ultra speeds)
2x 1GB Corsair XMS


(2) IDE WD150
(1) SATA2 WD2500

Opiton 1:
Partition the WD2500 and put XP and games on one of the partitions. Stripe (RAID 0) the two WD150's for the download directory and XP temp files, and use an el-cheapo RAID card to manage the array. Since my board has only two IDE channels, one of them is used for the DVD-RW. The el-cheapo RAID card can support four drives using two channels, but I'll be using the one drive on each channel.

Option 2:
Partition the WD2500 and put XP and games on one of the partitions. Stripe (RAID 0) the two WD150's for the download directory and XP temp files, but this time use the remaining onboard IDE channel and hook up the WD150's in a master/slave configuration and let XP create the array. No RAID card will be used. On my old 1GHz system, I noticed that my RAID 0 runs faster when I let XP create the array. I also have another HTPC with a Barton 3200+ with 3 WD400's in RAID 0 (1 on channel1 and 2 on channel2) on the RAID card, but load times "feel" slower than the 1Ghz system.

Option 3:
Boot using the RAID card with XP and games on one partition of the RAID 0 array and the pagefile.sys and other temp files on the other. Partition the SATA drive and use one of the partitions as a "ghost" backup drive.
 
I wouldn't use Raid-0 unless you're planning on moving a hell of a lot of data around in big chunks. (No, not like game levels, more like several-gigabyte video files and such). There's virtually no performance gain in normal-user situations (or even enthusiast situations) and the likelihood of data loss is quite a bit higher.

That said, assuming these "wd150's" are 15 gb drives, I'd partition the 250GB into one OS partition (say, 40GB) and one "Main" partition for games, movies, mp3's, etc. I'd put any downloads onto one of the 150's and use the other one for the page file/backup/random stuff.
 
Yes the WD150's ar old 15GB drives. I should have clarified some more. The goal is to get faster hard drive performace for everyday web browsing and occasional marathon gaming. I'm grouping XP and other programs into one partition and download/temp/pagefile into another because it will serve as temporary storage for large and small files like video and image files for editiing and other stuff. Basically, it's a working drive.

With the 250GB drive being newer, having more cache, and also having denser platters, I'm just not sure if I should use it as the main drive. I know RAID 0 can have faster throughput, but does it load programs faster? I've done searches (and maybe I need to do more), but it seems like there's a lot who stripe ther Raptors and a lot who say it doesn't matter.

If I throw XP and other programs on the RAID array, I'll be backing up very frequently on the 250. Besides, I tend to do a fresh install every several months anyway.
 
If you want some very decent info on raid 0/1/etc. performance vs. standard drives, there are some very thoroughly discussed threads here in the "disk storage systems" sub-forum. The basic consensus is you'll get better performance from a single sata / sata2 drive than from a striped set of older 15gb ata drives for 98% of what you do. Raid 0 is for transferring huge-assed amounts of data in huge-assed chunks. If 2-second-faster load times in a game matter that much to you, you'd better get an extremely well-paying job to finance your ridiculously expensive rig :)
 
Solid state drives here I come! LOL! Thanks for in input. I'm going to use the 250 as my main drive and partition it as needed. As for IDE RAID 0, I'm going to leave it out for now and add it later.
 
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