HDD Options?

Devilman

Devilman

Devilman

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9 Feb 2004
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Its about time I finally upgraded my aging IDE Seagates with some newer drives, but i got a few quesitons.

Ive currently got ..

80gig Baracuda IV (Partitioned as 10gb for OS, the rest for progs / games)
200Gig Baracuda 7200.8 used mainly for storage + some games.

Both drives are IDE and since my DS3 mobo only has a single IDE port, Currently having to use crappy USB external DVD burner, which is a pain too.


Im thinking of buying a WD Caviar Black 640gb drive, but not sure how to utilise it within the system currently..

I could partition the WD Black as say, 10gb (for OS) and the rest for games etc.. but how much performance impact would I likely see compared to having the OS on a seperate drive from the games / programs?

Is it better to put most programs on the same partition as the OS and keep the games seperate on the 2nd partition? (as some progs are commonly running in the background along with the OS, and possibly load on start-up)

Also would it be adviseable to instead use the 200gb seagate (or similar) for OS / Programs drive and then use the 640gb Caviar for games etc.. but I suspect this may still be slower than the WD with 2 partitions on it (1 for OS + Progs, 2nd for Games (plus some storage).

Cheers all :)
 
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i would say you have two options

1) partition the new drive in to OS/Apps together and another partition for data

2) use your 200gb for OS/Apps and keep your new drive for data.

i dont know the speed of your 200gb drive but at a guess the newer drive would probably be the quicker option and neater too

im assuming the new drive is SATA and you could remove the older drives and then get an internal CD/DVD drive on your IDE
 
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Caviar Black can be well faster than those old drives together.
Even in STR it's probably equal to both of them together and read ahead&write caching algorithms of Seagates have been rarely any good...
That while Caviar Black's superior firmware makes short work of "equivalent" modern drives of Samsung and Seagate:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/640gb-hdd-roundup_14.html


If some work requires caching huge amounts of data blowing up paging file size then it might be sensible to retain 7200.8 for use as swap drive...
But as you've gotten along with that small HDD capacity I don't think you're doing any such work.

BTW, what did you like "noisiness" of (Barracuda) ATA IV?
 
I'd get rid of those two old drives and just use the new one, because I am quite sure it will indeed be quicker on its own. Keep the 200 gig one only if you really need it for storage purposes, and where speed isn't important.

If you do go with one drive, I would advise making several partitions, at least three.
 
Devilman said:
Im thinking of buying a WD Caviar Black 640gb drive, but not sure how to utilise it within the system currently..

I could partition the WD Black as say, 10gb (for OS) and the rest for games etc.. but how much performance impact would I likely see compared to having the OS on a seperate drive from the games / programs?

Is it better to put most programs on the same partition as the OS and keep the games seperate on the 2nd partition? (as some progs are commonly running in the background along with the OS, and possibly load on start-up)
Click to expand...
I'd just partition the 640GB WD Black as 100GB (OS, installed apps), 496GB (user data, everything else). There's no point in keeping programs on a different partition from the OS, and 100GB will give you a reasonable amount of breathing space, plus the option of upgrading to Vista/Win7 at a later date (I guess with a 10GB OS partition you're currently running XP), without having to repartition and blow away the user data.

You could keep the 200GB IDE drive and use it for extra storage/backup, and install it with an IDE optical drive (assuming you have one) as master/slave. You might want to leave it disconnected before installing the OS on the new drive though, if you want to avoid some... errr, unorthodox drive letter assignments.

You might in theory see some benefit in having apps/games installed on a different physical drive from the OS, so that multiple data sets can be accessed concurrently, but I suspect the new WD will be so much faster than the Seagates that doing it this way would do more harm than good, even if in fact there was any noticeable difference either way in practice.

My own view is that multiple partitions are generally more bother than they're worth - on the same physical drive, they add nothing to performance, and you always end up filling particular partitions earlier than you anticipated. It makes sense to keep the OS separate from the user data, so you can format/reinstall if necessary with the minimum inconvenience, but beyond that I try to keep drive letters to a minimum and all the available free space as continuous as possible.

It's a personal thing though, and really there's no "recommended" solution, it depends on what works best for you. :)
 
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dirtydog said:
^ changing drive letters afterwards is easy.
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The point I was making above is that IDE drives are enumerated before SATA drives, so he's likely to end up with the OS installed on D:\ if he wants it on the WD, if the setup procedure sees an existing partition on the Seagate (which will be assigned C:\)

Yes, other drive letters are easily changed, but good luck changing the Windows system partition from D:\ back to C:\ ... :)
 
CaptainCrash said:
The point I was making above is that IDE drives are enumerated before SATA drives, so he's likely to end up with the OS installed on D:\ if he wants it on the WD, if the setup procedure sees an existing partition on the Seagate (which will be assigned C:\)

Yes, other drive letters are easily changed, but good luck changing the Windows system partition from D:\ back to C:\ ... :)
Click to expand...

Shrug... I have SATA hard drives and an IDE optical drive, and never had that issue myself.
 
dirtydog said:
Shrug... I have SATA hard drives and an IDE optical drive, and never had that issue myself.
Click to expand...
To make it clearer, IDE hard drives are enumerated before SATA hard drives.

Paul11 said:
i would always unplug other drives before installing windows

avoiding the D: C: issue
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It seems OK to leave them all connected if you're just reinstalling to a pre-existing partition on the first enumerated drive, but yes, unplugging all the others is probably the simplest way of avoiding tears before bedtime. :)
 
CaptainCrash said:
unplugging all the others is probably the simplest way of avoiding tears before bedtime. :)
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:) exactly the reason i mention it. as before bedtime is normally when you are tired and likely to make mistakes.

i installed windows once and ended up formating and installing it on to my data drive by mistake..... was many many tears (and cursing)
 
even a WD Green would pummel the current performance you have :)

i'd set..

10gb for 2000
20gb for Xp
30-40gb for vista

install programs to C:

install Steam, and docs/media on D:


always unplug all other hard drives when installing windows. stops any dumb problems or drive letter issues
 
As others have said, just use WD for main drive (C: with OS and apps - makes backing up easier, remainder as D: for data), and the other two drives as backup drives to keep two copies of important data.
 
TY all for the info / thoughts, has helped a lot.. I think its probly fair to say (after running HD Tune on my current drives) that yes indeed, even with a partitioned WD Black, itll still be far faster than any other combination of drives I could come up with by a fair margin...

Seagate Baracuda IV 80GB

Seagate80.jpg



Seagate 7200.8 200GB

Seagate200.jpg



Both these drives are pretty dang slow as seen here, even the 7200.8 is around 1/2 the numbers a WD 640 Black gets. Definatly looks like its only worth using the drives for backup etc..


Something im not too sure of tho, on the "health" page of HD Tune, both my drives still report as "Healthy" tho seem to have large error numbers, is this normal, or a sign of dying drives? (I get no strange noises from the drives etc..)

Seagate80_Health.jpg


Seagate200_Health.jpg



Are these numbers anythin to be worried about?
 
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Devilman said:
Something im not too sure of tho, on the "health" page of HD Tune, both my drives still report as "Healthy" tho seem to have large error numbers, is this normal, or a sign of dying drives? (I get no strange noises from the drives etc..)
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Not all programs can interpret SMART data of all drives correctly so try different programs like SpeedFan and HDD health.

Or do you think that "current readings" of Start/Stop Count, Power Cycle Count and Power On Hours Count can be right?
 
Devilman said:
Are these numbers anythin to be worried about?
Click to expand...
Seagate drives are notorious for giving pessimistic SMART readings - the only figure that might give a minor cause for concern is the "reallocated sector count" on the 80GB drive, but it's still a long way from the failure threshold. If you're keeping that drive in service, you might want to check it once in a while to see if anything's changed. Ignore the yellow highlight for "spin retry count", that's a bug in HDTune when it's used with Seagate drives.

Don't rely too heavily on SMART reporting in any case - obviously, if it shows a drive in a failure condition that's not good news, but apparently over half of HDDs fail while still passing SMART tests (there was a study to this effect, but I'm too lazy to google for it now). Your best bet is to use common sense, keep an eye (and ear) out for things like strange noises, taking an unusually long time to copy/move data, unusually long delays when opening folders and so on, and run the manufacturer's diagnostic utility once every so often.
 
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