Why the performance difference?

elfy · 17 Feb 2007 at 13:23

t31os said:
I've always thought having seperate drives worked really well (pure personal choice), and i've since had time to compare the difference and agree its worth it.

Though in regards to the raptor, its purely my windows drive because its the smallest, if i had more drives, the 160gb (games & aps) drive would be my windows drive........... it does really well in the read and write benchmarks (sata2 16mb cache for those curious) and it does not make that worky worky noise like the Raptor does.

Point is, using 1 drive does drag down performance compared to multiple drives.....

i've got 2x80gb drives in raid0 for my windows and games, dyah think it would be better if they were used seperatly, one for doze and other for games/apps?

pbze · 17 Feb 2007 at 13:24

all great points guys

I've got rid of all unnecessary services and I do defrag quite regularly

so I'll get another 80GB hard drive I think and use the 250GB as a games / backup drive

if I do this should I set up another partition on the 80GB windows hard drive and use this for the pafegile or am I reading the above information wrong?

artaxerxes · 17 Feb 2007 at 13:36

elfy said:
i've got 2x80gb drives in raid0 for my windows and games, dyah think it would be better if they were used seperatly, one for doze and other for games/apps?

Well... I cannot ever recommend RAID 0. If one drive fails you lose all your data. The perfomance gains of RAID 0 are minimal compared to twice the chance of failure.

http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0

There are situations where RAID 0 is useful - but it is mostly buzzword bragging rights.

t31os · 17 Feb 2007 at 13:55

My raptor has the full use of its 74gb, creating partitions just splits the data more imo, so you don't necessarily get all your OS system files, boot files at the fastest area of the disk.

This is how i have mine....

C: Windows - Drive 1
D: Storage - Drive 2
E: Games - Drive 3
F: Aps - Drive 3 second partition

I keep everything i can off the windows drive, and have Diskeeper manage auto defrags everyday and also let diskeeper manage my pagefile.

I can confidently come onto the PC everyday and find it runs the same speed..... not noticed any slow downs as yet....

I've slipstreamed SP2 onto my XP install to, and believe this is also smoother then a plain XP install > patch with SP2.

pbze · 17 Feb 2007 at 14:34

t31os said:
My raptor has the full use of its 74gb, creating partitions just splits the data more imo, so you don't necessarily get all your OS system files, boot files at the fastest area of the disk.

This is how i have mine....

C: Windows - Drive 1
D: Storage - Drive 2
E: Games - Drive 3
F: Aps - Drive 3 second partition

I keep everything i can off the windows drive, and have Diskeeper manage auto defrags everyday and also let diskeeper manage my pagefile.

I can confidently come onto the PC everyday and find it runs the same speed..... not noticed any slow downs as yet....

I've slipstreamed SP2 onto my XP install to, and believe this is also smoother then a plain XP install > patch with SP2.

what are the sizes of the drives and partitions out of interest?

sorry about all the questions but the slipstream of sp2 bit, I have an official copy of xp but its an ancient one now and doesn't have sp2 included (or slipstreamed) is there a way of making it so that it installs both then without contacting MS for a new disk?

artaxerxes · 17 Feb 2007 at 15:09

http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

slipstream instruction

pbze · 17 Feb 2007 at 22:46

artaxerxes said:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

slipstream instruction

great link, cheers. just crashed nero mind but I'll plod away

in regards to another hard drive I should get which 80GB SataII drive would you guys recommend, it'll have to be a standard hard drive i.e. not a Raptor unfortunately

t31os · 18 Feb 2007 at 12:34

My drives.....

c: Raptor - 16mb 74gb
d: WD Sata2 16mb 250gb
e: & f: WD Sata2 16mb 160gb

Slipstreamed disk is one i made myself.

Using that same guide... http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

t31os · 18 Feb 2007 at 16:30

Raptor isnt important but i wanted my OS on the smallest drive, in real world performance, unless you specific aps that can utilize the extra burst speed its really a waste of money.

Any sata2 drive with a 16mb cache should be good, though personally, and this is a personal preference, i'd choose Western Digital (same people who make raptors), as their drives seem quiet (minus the raptors of course) compared to other drives....

Ideally any independant drive should give you an increase.... because you spread the load out. So don't be too picky about which brand....... just choose the one you think is right...... i usually use google and here, compare reviews, etc....

I'm set on WD though, never let me down..... i couldnt give a toss if they come a few split seconds behind another drive, they work great and they make less noise then the other brands imo.