RAID 0, Windows and Gaming

Marakith · 10 Oct 2006 at 11:36

Hello,

There are a lot of threads on similar notes in the forums, but it is not clear to me in black and white whether I'm doing the right thing. Just need some confirmation/ specific advice.

I'm planning to do this:

1] Put 2 74Gb (16Mb buffer) Raptors in RAID 0.
2] Use the above as my OS and core apps (Word, Outlook, Firefox etc.) disk.
3] Have a Seagate .10 drive as a storage drive
4] Use the Seagate to run games, documents and music.

Will this give me the fastest possible system for gaming and multitasking? I play games in windows mode very often and want the freedom to alt-tab around to my heart's desire.

This is all on a Conroe system based off a P5W64D Mobo with 2Gb RAM.

I also want the arrangement to cope very easily with what Vista does to it.

I'd really like to put the order through today, if possible, so that I can build the install tomorrow.

Thanks very much in advance for your help!

smids · 10 Oct 2006 at 13:14

It would waste MASSIVE space to do that. I would put windows, games and programs on the raptor and use the Seagate only for storage - otherwise you might as well buy 36GB raptors.

i.e.:

Raptor RAID: Windows/Games/Programs - in that order of installation - this ensures the games are at the fastest part of the drive after windows. Programs benefit little from RAID0 as most load instantaneously anyway.

Seagate - storage of music, videos, photos and preferably in RAID1 for safety.

Marakith · 10 Oct 2006 at 13:33

smids said:
It would waste MASSIVE space to do that. I would put windows, games and programs on the raptor and use the Seagate only for storage - otherwise you might as well buy 36GB raptors.

Thanks for the advice, Smids!

You don't reckon the games will conflict for disk access with the rest of Windows then? Or will it be negligible?

Ta!

smids · 10 Oct 2006 at 14:00

On a raptor RAID - I wouldn't worry about it. The NCQ will kick in anyway so the disk will perform as well as it is going to get on a desktop solution. Games will benefit far more from the raptor access times and the high sustained read - see how fast you load maps etc! - and this will be far superior to the Seagate.