Best HD to use as a boot disk? + configuring different drive uses

b.cummins

b.cummins

b.cummins

Associate
Joined
23 Mar 2006
Posts
906
Location
Guildford, Surrey
I've been finding it a little hard to find some specific information, so I thought I'd ask around here.

ATM I have a 150gb ADFD Raptor, which I intend to use primarily as a games install drive.

I was considering the boot drive to be this as well, and then getting a 500gb purely for storage.

Some people have recommended I make a large drive partitioned, for increased reliability, and others recommend using two smaller drives in RAID 0.. tho I'm not that big on RAID i've used raptors in raid and noticed little real world difference in performance.

My question is, would it be optimal performance wise or faster
to have a configuration using 3 drives -

A primary boot - O/S
My 150gb raptor just for games
a larger drive for video files, music etc in partitions?

Do you guys know what the best/fastest drive for a boot drive is? I was thinking the smallest raptor might be good (36gb) but I've heard in the case of a boot drive one of the seagates is actually better?

I need a proper hard drive expert :D

Also, what is NCQ and when is appropriate to use it? My drives and motherboard support it!
 
Listen, if you want to know what terms like NCQ are then just stop being lazy and Google them, it'll take you 2 seconds and means that people don't have to waste their time typing it. :)

As for hard-drives, this is what I have for mine:

Main boot/windows C: - 74GB WD Raptor

Games D: - 250GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA II (1st)

Downloads/Utilities E: - 250GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA II (2nd)

Backup F: - Samsung Spinpoint 120GB

Works a treat.

I reccommend you buy a smallish fast SATA drive for your boot disk, in fact a 74GB Raptor would be nice if you have the moolah. The use your 150GB for games only, and buy a cheap-ish 120GB drive for downloads and backup. :)
 
Last edited:
There's no point getting an old 36GB raptor anymore, the platter density is far too low to compete with most 7200RPM drives. The current generation ones aren't a whole lot better.

Save yourself the time and hassle and put OS/Apps on the Raptor, then use another drive for storage. Boot times, load times and paging are all dependant on disk speed, and you've got a fast hdd there to use for them.

2 seconds of searching found you this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing
 
yes i saw that - but the problem is - it doesn't explain how to enable it and also implies its mainly for servers? So why would a retail drive support such a feature? That is what I wanted to know I am sorry I phrased it inelegantly.
 
Yes, NCQ is mainly aimed at servers. SATA however is also aimed at the server market where it can provide high density storage at a fraction fo the cost of SCSI in solutions where outright speed is not a requirement.

SATA now supports a lot of what previously were SCSI only features:

Hot swap capability
NCQ for optimised reads
Staggered spin up of multi drive systems.

NCQ is normally enabled either via the SATA controller drivers or by using the drives in AHCI if your motherboard supports that.
 
I dont know if NCQ is directly the reason, but one my samsung drive running on the sata2 port (ahci) drive seeks are a lot quiter then running on the sata1 port making the drive noticable quieter in use.

my guess is ncq is optimised to know what it needs to read in one head movment, rarther then belting about allover the drive loading random bits in at a time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom