New rig, 2 hard drives, what settings for best perofrmance?

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Rig overview:

Motherboard - Gigabyte 965 DS3
CPU - c2d e4300
GFX - x800gto
RAM - 2GB of crucial d9gmh pc5300c3
PSU - Tagan 480W
HD -74gb raptor and a 320gb 7200.10

Now, I've got the raptor on the intel controller, and the 7200.10 on the gigabyte controller - I'm not sure if this helps performance at all.

Anyway, I've just done a fresh install of XP pro on the raptor, and am about to start installing programs.

Would it be best to install games and such like on the 7200.10?

What about the pagefile? At the moment windows is managing it, and is only using the raptor. Surely it would be faster if it used the 7200.10 as well?
 
MikeHunt79 said:
Would it be best to install games and such like on the 7200.10??
Yes, keep the big apps (games and such) away from the windows drive. Save the space there for Windows Update!

MikeHunt79 said:
What about the pagefile? At the moment windows is managing it, and is only using the raptor. Surely it would be faster if it used the 7200.10 as well?

The page file should be on the drive with the fastest access time, i.e. the Raptor, I would leave windows to sort it out in your case. The page file is one large 'contiguous' file and should be only on one drive.
 
malcolm said:
The page file should be on the drive with the fastest access time, i.e. the Raptor, I would leave windows to sort it out in your case. The page file is one large 'contiguous' file and should be only on one drive.
Ok, it's just that I formatted my 7200.10 after I installed XP, so it might have done something different if it was formatted before I installed XP.

I'll leave the pagefile on the raptor then... It does have a better access time after all. :) I guess with 2gb of RAM it shouldn't be needed too often with any luck. :)
 
malcolm said:
The page file should be on the drive with the fastest access time, i.e. the Raptor, I would leave windows to sort it out in your case. The page file is one large 'contiguous' file and should be only on one drive.
I tend to disagree with that. Pagefile placement (as with any other data) needs to be considered in terms of where the I/O contention is going to come from rather than the raw speed of the drives in question. If the pagefile is going to be hit at the same time as the system is loading something from the Raptor then it'll be better on the other disk. The useful thing about the page file though is it's not the end of the world if it starts on the wrong drive, moving it and seeing what difference it makes is easy enough to do.
 
rpstewart said:
I tend to disagree with that. Pagefile placement (as with any other data) needs to be considered in terms of where the I/O contention is going to come from rather than the raw speed of the drives in question. If the pagefile is going to be hit at the same time as the system is loading something from the Raptor then it'll be better on the other disk. The useful thing about the page file though is it's not the end of the world if it starts on the wrong drive, moving it and seeing what difference it makes is easy enough to do.
Minus whale try putting the pagefile on the 7200.10 and see how well it works then. I've got both drives up to the intel controller now, as the gigabyte one slows up booting, and doesn't show my HD temps in speedfan, while the intel one does. :)
 
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