Dual boot, RAID etc. options

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Will be building a new machine in the near future and was looking at installing both Vista and XP for backwards compatibility etc.

Firstly, I usually use a partition size of around 10GB for XP, page file etc. What would a comparitive partition size be for a Vista (ultimate) install - 20GB/30GB?

Secondly, looking at perhaps a single Raptor for the OS install and a RAID0 array of a couple of 7200.10s for programs and games. Or wouldn't I notice the difference by using a third 7200 for the OS rather than a raptor and benefit from the extra space...?
 
I'd use the 2 Seagates for everything and ditch the Raptor. All the Raptor buys you is a low seek time, the sustained transfer rate from the RAID array will be nearly twice that of the Raptor.

There's always the option of investing in a quick USB pen drive and trying out Vista Readyboost as well.
 
Figured I re-use this thread (sorry for the hi-jack! :p ).

As I already mentioned in a different thread I'm planning to RAID 1 two 80gb seagates. Problem is, it's been a while since I last had a raid setup, and I'm not too confident on how to set it up on my new (well...ish) motherboard.

Using a Lanparty Ultra-D (NF4 chipset), is there any problem with creating the raid array, and just letting the second drive auto copy everything that was on the booting drive. This is how I set it up before, but I'm not sure of the options available to me with this new board/controller as I can't find a definitive answer via google (they all cater for fresh XP installs).
 
Hmm RAID1 with an existing disk.... Only ever done it with blank ones.

Now the NVRAID utility will allow you to do some nifty online capacity expansion stuff within windows but you need to set the first disk up as RAID before you start. The question then becomes can you set a disk as part of a RAID1 without blanking it first?

The Nvidia RAID bios gives you the option to wipe disks before it creates arrays so I assume if you say no then it'll leave the stuff there. Therefore in theory you should be able to create a single disk RAID1 array with your already bootable disk and then add the second one and use the NVRAID utility to complete the mirror.

In practice however I would suggest that you lay your hands on a copy of Ghost or Acronis True Image and take an image copy of your boot drive onto the second 80Gb disk before you start, that way if it screws up you've still got a recovery point on the second disk but if it works you can just overwrite that during the mirroring.
 
Hey Magic Man, I use 20Gb for my Vista Business partition.

I re-located ALL the user stuff too a seperate storage partition. (prolly what u meant by pure-OS?). I usually have 5-8 GB free, it fluctuates a lot because of the error dumps etc Vista makes when it spits out its dummy! Running disk cleanup on that drive once a week seems to keep that at bay :)

Oh, and I used to have Ultimate RC1 on a 20Gb too. The difference in free space was negligible.
 
Ok, installed the drives, raided them (32k stripes, read caching disabled, 32k allocation table thingy :rolleyes:)

These are the results...I was expecting closer to 130mb/s, am I being optimistic here? Also noticed that the middle of the line seems to peak rather than peaking at the start of the graph. Seems different to a single hard drive, but then I haven't run HDtach on RAID before so..... :confused: :confused: :confused:

[img=http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/9651/seagateraidww2.th.jpg]

Any feedback/info would be great, thanks!

EDIT: I am a moron who cannot get stupid thumbnail link thingies to work!!!
 
Have you disabled the read caching on the drives through the SATA controller properties in device manager?

Your graph is actually quite similar to what I get from the same setup and I spent about 3 days fruitlessly trying to improve things. You should get a trace which is similar in shape to a single drive, higher at the left and then tailling off. The peak can be 160Mb/s or so but due to the shape of the curve the average transfer rate tends to be 125-130Mb/s so neither of us is drastically down on the deal.
 
Yep, thats where I disabled the read caching. Before I did that, the curve what at a lowly 80mb/s all the way across with one 150mb peak right in the middle (seemed very bloody weird!!!).

I've tried disabled the write caching option too but it didn't seem to do much. Will fiddle around some more today see if anything crops up (disable command queueing, fiddle with BIOS, etc). I'm still happy with the improved speeds and a nice 600gb (formatted) drive, but I like to push for more... :D

Ta again...
 
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