Considering raid, first time user

[M4573R]

For my new system, I was considering 2x WD 640 caviar blacks in raid 0, then a third drives for important things. The two is raid would be everything re-installable; OS, games, apps.

I've never done raid before so I don't know of the complications when setting it up. Does windows 7 and/or vista have raid drivers built in? Or will I need to dig out a floppy drives to install drivers.

I'm also wonder about how a program like Ultimate Defrag works with raid and different partitions. Lets say I have two drives in raid 0 with two partitions, one for OS, one for games, aps, etc. Can I get the games and the OS on the outside edge of the platter? Should I not bother with a partitions? I've never done raid and have no idea how things like this act.

 

[Yoosh]

Vista is alot better with drivers during install. If you're using an intel southbridge I doubt you'll have to install a raid driver during install. If you do just copy it to a usb flash drive and install it from there.
If you read my post on your other thread you will get my opinion on the raid 0. Also I'd be willing to bet you'd get better performance off of one SSD than that raid 0 in real world usage (ie program loads, game loads, boot times).

 

[M4573R]

Yes, but I can't get a 600gb SSD.
I'm also very confused on how Ultimate Defrag is dealing with my 2 partitions right now. The help file also doesn't open. I'm trying to get games and the OS to the outside of the platter.

 

[dctokyo]

Windows 7 and vista have raid drivers built in, so on a Intel board you do not need to load them.

Can I get the games and the OS on the outside edge of the platter? Do not worry about this,

I'm also very confused on how Ultimate Defrag is dealing with my 2 partitions right now

You do understand that one partition sits on the outside and the other partition sits inside of the first one as you have 2 partitions on one drive.

 

[M4573R]

Is the first partition always on the outside edge? So the second partition only gets optimized to its own outer edge correct?
Should I be creating my big partition first, and the OS partition second then?
Or just create 1 partition so I can have my games and os both on the outside edge?

 

[dctokyo]

It was a common practice back with lower speed ATA drives for gamers to use 1 drive (primary master) for the OS and 1 drive (secondary master) for the games. This was mainly for performance.

These days with just about everyone using higher speed SATA drives and better optimized OSs is really isn't necessary.... though some people still do it.

Personally, I still prefer to put the OS, apps and games on one set of drives, and media / important docs / work stuff on a 2nd set of drives.

But……………….


* Partitioning allows the distinct separation of operating system, program, and data files. To a new user this may seem like a minor point, but if you've ever suffered a system crash or virus infection where everything on a partition has been wiped out, this one item alone is worth the time and planning it takes to implement an advanced partitioning scheme.
* Partitioning allows you to create a selective backup scheme that targets the areas that need frequent backups while paying less attention to items like system and program files.
* Partitioning allows you to make much more efficient use of hard disk space. Files are stored on a hard disk in a unit called a cluster. Smaller partitions use a smaller cluster size, more closely matching the size of the majority of files that are stored on a hard drive, resulting in more efficient use of available space.
* Partitioning allows for faster and more efficient disk maintenance. Like it or not, hard disks require maintenance. Not the kind of maintenance where you disassemble the hard drive and clean it out, but more along the lines of organizational maintenance such as defragmenting. It's much quicker to perform these maintenance tasks on smaller partitions than one huge, non-partitioned drive.
* Partitioning allows for better data directory and file organization. Setting aside a specific partition allows it to be organized much more efficiently than having it strewn across a single, huge partition.
* Partitioning allows the paging file to be placed in it's own partition which will eliminate the fragmentation problem of the system drive when the paging file is constantly resized due to varying virtual memory requirements.
* Partitioning allows the creation of separate areas for what are commonly known as scratch disks that are used by some programs as a temporary work area. Adobe Photoshop and many other graphics and multimedia editing programs that work with very large files experience a substantial performance benefit from having a separate, defined scratch partition.
* Partitioning allows one system to contain multiple operating systems on separate partitions. Depending on what operating systems are involved in the multi-boot scheme it can impact the file system that must be used, but the capability is available.
* Partitioning increases system stability. Toss 100 - 200 gigabytes of operating system, applications, data, music, and other miscellaneous items onto one large partition and you're asking for trouble. Something is bound to go wrong with something and it's much easier to diagnose a problem when the drive contents are separated into smaller chunks.