Dedicated OS Drive

Aelred89 · 22 Feb 2007 at 15:07

I can't seem to find a definate answer for this... Will I benefit from buying a seperate drive for my operating system? Maybe a 36BG Raptor or a lower capacity Barracuda 7200.10? Atm i was just thinking of getting a 500GB Barracuda drive for everything, is this a bad idea?

Datamonkey · 22 Feb 2007 at 15:19

its a good idea,
to an extent.

I use 2 x 74gb raptors in raid 0, which i use for o/s and apps and games
it flys.

In a single drive solution i would go for something slightly bigger than the 74gb, and use it the same was as i have, os and apps. And then use the larger drive for storage and such.

rpstewart · 22 Feb 2007 at 15:21

I don't subscribe to the dedicated OS drive theory, I just don't see the point. A small (~40-50Gb) partition at the front of a 7200.10 will be faster than a 36Gb Raptor - the Raptor is old technology and actually quite slow now.

The only advantage that having 2 disks gives you is having 2 sets of disk heads which can give better I/O performance than a single partitioned disk but only if you're moving data from one disk to another.

Manlove is my forte · 22 Feb 2007 at 16:21

it really depends on the frequency your hard disk I/O and what you are reading/writing.

If you were running Databases or something that had almost continuous access and needed the performance then sure put everything* on separate disks.

However I think you probably won't see much improvement from having your OS on a separate disk from everything else.

SWAP and TEMP are another matter all together. If I could get small 5-10GB raptors I would put my swap on one and get another for all my Temporary files.

One advantage I have found from having a separate OS drive is that when I want to do a rebuild it is much less hassle. I just blast the whole drive with a low level then high level format. Then reinstall the os and program files as necessary.

*Everything being:
OS
TEMP
SWAP
Datafiles
Backup Files
Log Files
Control Files
Program Files

rpstewart · 22 Feb 2007 at 16:38

Kronologic said:
If you were running Databases or something that had almost continuous access and needed the performance then sure put everything* on separate disks.

Been there, done that. Absolute pain to get set up but boy does it fly once it's running.

Kronologic said:
One advantage I have found from having a separate OS drive is that when I want to do a rebuild it is much less hassle. I just blast the whole drive with a low level then high level format. Then reinstall the os and program files as necessary.

It's possible to do that with partitions on a single disk (with the exception of the low level format part), that's how I do it.

Manlove is my forte · 22 Feb 2007 at 16:46

rpstewart said:
Been there, done that. Absolute pain to get set up but boy does it fly once it's running.

It's possible to do that with partitions on a single disk (with the exception of the low level format part), that's how I do it.

I've actually never seen the point of partitions, unless you are planing on Dual booting a machine. But you are correct.