What hard drive setup?

Firefly86

Firefly86

Firefly86

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Joined
19 Jul 2006
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258
Location
Gibraltar
Hi guys,

Im a little confused hope you can help me out=)

Atm I've got just a Seagate 80GB HDD as my boot drive.
All this drive has got on it is the OS (WInXP) and well thats about it.

On my secondary drive I've got my Games and Program Files, and also My Documents.

What I'm trying to sort out is which of the drive I should be running in Stripe as I'm looking at buying some additional hard drives and run then in a stripe setup.

What im confused about is, which should I be running in stripe to improve performance of games and apps? The boot drive or the drive with the games/program files in it.

Sorry if this is a little noobish I'm pretty new to Raid/

Thanks
 
Hey, i am not an expert at this but I run RAID on my pc. And personally, i would put it on ** boot drive because once u've set up the RAID both HDD's will boot because they have essentially become one drive but I would put it on the boot because that is the one ** BIOS will read first.

Plus, once set up, all ** data will be shared between the two drives. So, i think it would be best to start out with ** files (My documents, etc.)on the other drive and ** OS and system files on the boot drive.

I hope i've been of some help. Just be sure that u hav enough memory on ** bot drive to support the RAID memory
 
You don't state what 2nd HDD you have or what HDDs you are thinking of getting...

There is no real benefit (in performance) in RAID0 over running SATAs in IDE (mode) for running programs and games etc, the only real benefit is if you work with large (video) files and do a lot of compression/decomressions...you also have the issue that on RAID0, if one HDD goes the you will loose everything....so a good backup system is essential.

In saying the above, you want to use the fastest (Average read & Access) HDDs (preferably the same specs) that you have in your setup, as this will give you the best performance...once you have made you setup, your HDDs are recognised as 1 (one) volume by Windows, I would then make a partition (C:\) of about 20GB (for XP) or 30GBs (for Vista) for just the Windows and Programs folders (and Documents if you so wish, but if large move over to partition D:\), the other partition you can use to run you games from etc.

So, you need at least 3 HDDs, 2 for your RAID0 set up and 1 for backups.

This is just one way you could do it, you will probably get a different answer from everyone you ask. :)
 
Well...my complete setup is as follows :

C (80GB Seagate)
OS

D (200GB Maxtor)

Games
Program Files
Documents

E (300GB Maxtor)

Torrent Downloads
Emule Downlods
Music

F (300GB Maxtor)

As above

I'm hoping to get 2 x 750G drives to replace the 2 300GB drives for the data, and 2 x [drive here] to set up in Raid. What I'm really confused about is that...even though my games and program files are installed on the D drive, the registry entries for them all are still on the C drive. So what I was wondering is whether or not having the D Drive in stripe setup would have any benefit whatsoever on *** performance of the games and applications, or whether it should be the C drive thats setup in stripe.

I hope I've explained that a little better :S
If you feel the stripe just isnt worth it let me know and I'll go for a mirror i spose

EDIT - What im really looking for is the ultimate hard drive setup, I dont really know it its more efficient to run games and apps on the main boot drive or to keep them on a separate drive.

Any advice appreciated
 
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