SSD and raid 0 Hard Drives

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I'm going to take the plunge and get an SSD for Windows 7 and a couple of 1TB hard drives to put in raid 0.
The 100GB OCZ Vertex Limited or the Vertex 2 are the hot favourites for the SSD side of the house and the Spinpoint F3 is up for the hard drives. PC ( i7 930 clocked at 3.8 with a 280 GTX) is used for a host of applications ranging from Photoshop to intense first person shooter.

Are the following statements correct: The SSD will provide a super fast windows OS along with a few programs I can fit on the drive (elements 7 and flavour of the week game). The drives in raid 0 should provide speedy (for hard drive) access to movies, pics and any other cr*p that I have on them.

I plan to do a fresh install of window 7 on the SSD. I have never dabbled with raid before so I'm not sure where to start. How do I go about setting the 2 hard drives in raid 0. Can they be done after the install of Windows or must they be in raid before I start.
 
Depends enitrely on what you are doing...

Gaming; SSD; apps+ your most played games put there using symlinks. Single HD; 1 partition games folder, rest storage. Raid is not worth it.
 
Personally I'd spend that extra 15% and get a 160GB Intel, Extra space is always handy - 160GB should be enough for Windows + Apps + at least 10 games - and I don't think the Vertex LE is noticably faster.

Plus the Intel is a proven design.

Mechanical drive wise, I'd go with a mirror RAID - you don't need the speed on your storage drives, and you certainly don't want the unreliability.
 
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i dont really see the point of symlinking games tbh.

just install them directly to another drive if you dont have the room on the SSD
 
i dont really see the point of symlinking games tbh.

just install them directly to another drive if you dont have the room on the SSD

Thing is my steam folder is like 150gb, and I would love to be corrected but have not been able to find a way of installing the games contained in it accross different drives. This way the games I play most are on my ssd but if I get an urge to play another I can do.

what is a symlink?
1. Take a steam game and cut and paste it onto the ssd from your platter drive.
2. Using the command prompt you can make a symlink that will sit where the game folder was on your platter. Google to find out how to do, took me a while because you need to use exactly the right syntax.
3. It acts as a kind of 'super shortcut' meaning that whenever the os looks for the data or application, it gets redirected onto you ssd

Have to be honest I would rather find a simpler way of doing this that removes my platter drive completley rather than using it for shortcuts- any ideas anyone?
 
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i dont really see the point of symlinking games tbh.

just install them directly to another drive if you dont have the room on the SSD

The main reason is Steam - you can't split your steam installation between two volumes.
Plus Symlinking is very easy to set up, much quicker than reinstalling.
 
Thing is my steam folder is like 150gb, and I would love to be corrected but have not been able to find a way of installing the games contained in it accross different drives. This way the games I play most are on my ssd but if I get an urge to play another I can do.


1. Take a steam game and cut and paste it onto the ssd from your platter drive.
2. Using the command prompt you can make a symlink that will sit where the game folder was on your platter.
3. It acts as a kind of 'super shortcut' meaning that whenever the os looks for the data or application, it gets redirected onto you ssd

Have to be honest I would rather find a simpler way of doing this that removes my platter drive completley rather than using it for shortcuts- any ideas anyone?

ah i see, when it comes to steam, u dont get a lot of choise unfortuatlly. All games go in the steam directory.

i just put the whole steam directory on another drive, but i dont use steam for many games anyways.

of course, if some of the games you most play, and want to load up quickly are installed via steam, then it would make sense to symlink them onto the SSD.

i install most games via cd/dvd's so i can just select which drives to put each game on
 
i install most games via cd/dvd's so i can just select which drives to put each game on

Yea, to be honest i much prefer on release day, setting an alarm, starting a download and waking up to a game...

Steam should sort this, having said that I think symlinks should be talked about and used more...in bfbc2 I am half way across the field and 95/100 only person I can see for a good 20 seconds due to syminks; whacking all games on the ssd would cost the wrong side of 500 and be very poor value.

Just before a buddy invited me to play a game I hadnt syminked and by god did i know it...was left for dead 2 and it felt like i was in quicksand, hard drive thrashed and it dawned on me, going back is out of the question. Also with bfbc2, napoleon tw, windows, apps and civ 4...i still have 30gb usable!

Intel 80gb is the one to get, and honestly to me it justifies itself purely in saved time. We are talking seconds here and there but 2 minutes over a 2 hour gaming sesh, over 2 years...not even starting on the epeen extension.

As per startup;
Activate 4 core boot. (if you have quad.)
Turn the windows startup graphic off. This turned startup from wee to whoosh.
 
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