just ordered a 7200.11

rippling · 18 Jan 2008 at 08:26

as title ordered a 500gb 7200.11 to replace my old deskstar 80gb should i see a good speed improvment ? also if in the future i wanted to add say a ssd as an os drive could i raid the ssd and hd?

one other question , i have vista x64 i play mostly games and have lots of pics and do some work in RAW pics whats the best way for my to set up this drive? ie partitions etc and should i have games and os on the same partition? or just the os one its one and everything else on other partition?

balls · 18 Jan 2008 at 08:47

You should see a large performance increase between the deskstar and the 7200.11.

Unfortuneately you cannot raid 0/raid1 the SSD+7200.11.

Drive partitioning is a tricky subject that everybody seems to differ on. Personally I used to have a small boot+program partition say 20gb. Then I'd have one for Media/Photos and one for games.

The only advantage is that when you format/reinstall you won't need to back up your media/pics when you do it.

However I'd recommend you do backup photos etc to another drive / external as there is always a possibility that a drive will die and you'll lose a lot of information or even money paying for a data retrevial company to do their magic on it

rippling · 18 Jan 2008 at 08:56

ok cheers

rpstewart · 18 Jan 2008 at 09:43

balls said:
Unfortuneately you cannot raid 0/raid1 the SSD+7200.11.

Technically you can although it would be a bit of a daft idea. Unless you're using an Intel Matrix RAID controller you'd lose access to most of the space on the 7200.11. The 7200.11 would also define the access time for the array thus removing the only benefit of the SSD.

rippling · 18 Jan 2008 at 09:57

many thanks , so would it be worth me adding another 7200.11? and raiding them? if using my gigabyte onboard raid controller , whats the best raid option to select?

rpstewart · 18 Jan 2008 at 10:13

There are loads of differing opinions on the value of RAID0. Take a look as this thread and make your own mind up based on what you use the PC for.

balls · 18 Jan 2008 at 12:31

rpstewart said:
Technically you can although it would be a bit of a daft idea. Unless you're using an Intel Matrix RAID controller you'd lose access to most of the space on the 7200.11. The 7200.11 would also define the access time for the array thus removing the only benefit of the SSD.

er... what he said

For a two disk array, the two options are raid 0 and raid 1
Raid 0 is for pure speed by striping the data between the disks allows for the combined storage space of the drives, however if one of the drives die then you've effectively lost the combined data and statistically the failure rate should be twice that of a normal drive, and should always be used when being backed up with another drive, especially if you're doign photographic work.
Raid 1 mirrors the data onto both drives offering the storage space of a single drive. It offers slight backup, but only from drive failure, and not generally screwups by deleting it yourself. Obviously should be backed up also to protect from human error.