Windows 7 boot drive size

you mis understand.

I have 5 1tb drives, and currently i have to have 4 in an array, and one seperate. Sinc eyou make the whole array as bootable. Then, i am only allowed to partition up to 2tb, no matter what i do with using gpt etc since i twould put it over 2TB in size. so I have to have my OS on one drive, leaving me with 900gb of space that isnt in my array :(

I'd like to be able to have all 5 drives in the array, 100gb for OS, then partition the rest away to films/music/games/work etc but it wont let me :(

Gradually im thinking more and more of buying an ssd as i rekon i could fit it in somehow behind one of my fan controllers, and ive got 1 sata port free :/
 
Some RAID controllers have software that lets you do fancy things with the RAID, like RAID part of a few drives in one partition and the rest of the drives in another partition. If you're lucky, you can do that.
 
onboard nvidia controller, pretty sure i checked, and i coldnt see anything that was obvious. Nevermind then, ill just buy an ssd when it comes out and blue tack it inside the case or something lol
 
Using multiple partitions on a RAID kind of semi-wrecks the whoel idea of having a RAID array in teh first place, especially if you come to access data from more than one partition?

And also having the array THAT big, what if a drive fails? the lot will be wasted.

No one can possibly LEGALLY need to have 4x1GB Drives.
 
what are you on about partitions destroy the point of it? Its only so I can keep things seperate, I dont tend to access more than one partition at a time, since the majority of it is storage, plus with NCQ it really isnt that bad. I also didnt do it for performance, but for redundancy.

If a drive fails, the lot will be wasted? You heard of RAID 5? I'm not stupid enough to put that many drivs in raid 0 :P

I have like 700gb of games, once installed, and then having copys of all my game dvd's on my pc so i dont ahe to touch the cd's etc takes aup a lot of space, also having installers for everything i use, plus old drivers etc and also driver sets for all the PC's O ahve built for people uses even more space. All my music is on the pc, but thats a negligable amount. Blu Ray rips can quickly accumulate large amounts of space.

so, i have an 800gb games drive, which isnt full, and its also got 100gb os partition on that. I then have 2.72 TB in a RAID 5 array accross 4 drives, and i have around 1TB of that free atm, so no, i dont use it all....yet
 
sorry, been away.

How does it wreck it at all? Its just like having a folder for music, a fodler for games etc.

I could understand if i was using them as if they were seperate drives and putting stuff that would be accessed at the same times on the different partitions, but even then, if it wasnt partitions itd all still be on the array.

I have OS + apps/games on one drive in two partitions
then the rest, which is largely storage, I wont be reading from the array while writing to it, and the only things i would be using on it at the same time - say music while installing something from it, or working on files on it - is largely negligable and still gives me much more performance than a single drive.

Where I work, we partition up our raid arrays, since we have massiver servers running huge arrays and then its just this partition is the main shared network drive, this partition is for this server thats running on that box etc
 
Ch3m1c4L said:
How does it wreck it at all? Its just like having a folder for music, a fodler for games etc.

I could understand if i was using them as if they were seperate drives and putting stuff that would be accessed at the same times on the different partitions, but even then, if it wasnt partitions itd all still be on the array.
Click to expand...

It defeats the idea of having a RAID array for speed.

But as has been pointed out, its Mirrored & Striped more for ]safety than speed so thats fine.

However, to add on to the answer, if you have a RAID array with multiple partitions, and you access data from 2 partition at the same time, it will slow it down to the same speed as a normal single drive anyway.

So, if oyu have Windows on the same array, then taht will be accessing most of the time, and couple that with accessing from multiple partitions and the whole thing will be fartily slow and get bogged down when put under any real load, because at the end of the day, there is only the one array.

While on the other hand, if one drive was used for Music, and another drive for Movies and another for Games etc, then the user can happily use multiple drives to do multiple jobs at the same time and sufern no slowdowns.

For example, my setup :-

I download torrents all the time to my M:, thats an 80GB and it only does downloads nothing else.

C: is another 80GB and has only Windows and some utilties like defraggers, A/V and so on.
D: is a 320GB and that has my Programs and Games
E: is my Media Drive, and thats a 400GB
F: is a 120GB and thats got filled with loads of stupid junk, webpages, my docs, saved junk from insternet, pictures and what-not.

Now, I save all my older stuff to my Server, and so these drives are ( while close to full ) large enough for my everyday useage.

Now, I use D: as a temporary storage for converting my AVI Files to DVD, and so, what I have, is a load of AVI Files off my Camera stored on E:, getting converted and then stored on D: in DVD Format.
I am downlaoding permanently, my Linux ISOs and such onto M:, I am also burning 3 DVDs at the same time with data from D:, and perhaps the fourth Disk is a Linux ISO that I downloaded last night, I am also defragging Drive C: because it needs to and guess what? - I am also playing Dawn Of War SoulStorm.

Even more importantly is that I have not had any slowdown at all.

Could I do that on a single RAID array? - could I hell. Not without suffering massive slowdowns.

Thats what I mean.


Ch3m1c4L said:
I have OS + apps/games on one drive in two partitions
then the rest, which is largely storage, I wont be reading from the array while writing to it, and the only things i would be using on it at the same time - say music while installing something from it, or working on files on it - is largely negligable and still gives me much more performance than a single drive.

Where I work, we partition up our raid arrays, since we have massiver servers running huge arrays and then its just this partition is the main shared network drive, this partition is for this server thats running on that box etc
Click to expand...

Again, it depends on what you need to do. I need to access lots of junk in both directions from multiple sources and so a single array with multiple partitions simply does not work for me. As much as I have tried and tried various ways, it just isnt worth it.

My server has one array yes, but thats only a Mirrored array and since I only really dump files to it and from it as a temoprary storage more than a Server as such, this is possibly the most sensible option for me, but when I actually use it and try messing about with it, its quite sluggish at times because Windows is on the same array.
 
Cool, thats the same reason I had 4 drives in my old PC as it would do everything at once.

I now use laptop for anything like torrenting, or my media centre, depending on which is already being used something else, so this pc doesnt get used for more than one thing at a time anymore.

I know about windows on same drive etc, but then again, most people have that with there PC's anyway, so its not a new thing. I fully hadnt clicked onto the fact that it would be like having my windows drive on the same drive as everything else though....god i used to hate that. Still, Im currently thinking I might just get an SSD when win 7 is out and use that for windows to free up the drive i have sat with no backup :/

Thanks for the clarification that I wasnt missing something, just our different needs/wants from the drives.
 
I got an SSD for my Atari Falcon... Dunno why, but its a show off moment I suppose?

You should not ever defrag them it says... I can see why cos its fast but the files are messed up to buggery.

No, with a single Disk system, there is many reasons to partition.

The most obvious is that if you have, lets just say a 100GB Drive.

You have a 30GB for XP and the rest of the disk for Data, it wont be 70GB but lets just say it is for arguements sake

So, your drive is split up 30/70

Now, lets just say that Windows cocks up badly. You try a restore, sometimes you cannot do it, this is the luck of the draw sometimes so what are you going to do with all that data?

Nothing, you dont worry about it because you have moved it to D: so just format and reinstall windows onto C: and all your data is fine and safe.

Not the same with only one large 100GB C: is it?

You are either going to have to take the disk out and use a second PC or you will lose everything you have.

What do they say about putting all your eggs into one basket?

So, partitioning is a good idea in the right circumstances.

My original worry was like so many amateur RAID setups... They get 2 drives, lets say 500+500 and they span the array, not stripe, and then make 2x 500GB partitions???

WTF?

Seen it far too many times
 
Go on then. Explain.

What can you possibly NEED 4GB for?

LEGALLY!

You cannot.

Or at least you can if you have no backups
 
FatRakoon said:
Go on then. Explain.

What can you possibly NEED 4GB for?

LEGALLY!

You cannot.

Or at least you can if you have no backups
Click to expand...

4GB isn't even enough for Vista to install to...

However if you actually mean 4TB then there are several legal reasons for that amount of space...

Maybe the OP is heavily into video production.

Maybe he wants to rip his entire CD collection in WMA format instead of crappy MP3's.

Maybe he does a lot of rendering and stores the output as raw files.

Maybe he uses it to back other peoples computers up to before working on them.

Maybe he does indeed have backups of it all too.

Maybe he just wants some overhead for future stuff, I have about half a TB here, I know at the time I bought it that I thought I'd never fill it, these days it isn't even close to being enough space for all my various backups and files, let alone a backup of them.

Should I continue or did you want to stick with your assumption that he must be doing something illegal?
 
Ok, I did mean TB instead of GB thats a given.

However I stick to my original thoughts.

I help run a ghost hunting club, and since I have 4 Burners on my Video PC, I organise getting the videos from all ours cameras and compiling all the footage onto one set and we have months and months of video footage and it does not need 4TB.

My main PC that I use right now, has... Hang on... 84 Movies and 17465 Albums ( Given that each album contains about 8 tracks, thats over 100,000 MP3 tracks ) and that comes nowhere near 4TB

But no, Im not ignorant to the need for massive data storage, its getting more and more that everyone does indeed use up more and more data, of course it is, this allows us to have better quality music ( or legally backed up music ) as well as more and more Video cameras being able to record at much higher quality than before and so even just one hour of video footage can take over 20GB these days, I do see that, Im not totally ignorant.
 
FatRakoon said:
Ok, I did mean TB instead of GB thats a given.

However I stick to my original thoughts.

I help run a ghost hunting club, and since I have 4 Burners on my Video PC, I organise getting the videos from all ours cameras and compiling all the footage onto one set and we have months and months of video footage and it does not need 4TB.
Click to expand...

Which does not exclude anybody else from needing it whatsoever.

My main PC that I use right now, has... Hang on... 84 Movies and 17465 Albums ( Given that each album contains about 8 tracks, thats over 100,000 MP3 tracks ) and that comes nowhere near 4TB
Click to expand...

Yeh, but you're using crappy MP3's which I already made a comment about, should I accuse you of having illegal music on your pc? With 17465 albums one has to ask whether you paid for them all? No, because that would be ignorant, they could be from many of the unsigned bands out there that offer free downloads.

But no, Im not ignorant to the need for massive data storage, its getting more and more that everyone does indeed use up more and more data, of course it is, this allows us to have better quality music ( or legally backed up music ) as well as more and more Video cameras being able to record at much higher quality than before and so even just one hour of video footage can take over 20GB these days, I do see that, Im not totally ignorant.
Click to expand...

Yes you are, you basically accused the OP of illegal actions with nothing more to go than the quantity of storage and your own limited use of your own storage.

Ignorance at it's very finest to be honest.
 
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meh, i just ignore comments like it because im so used people on the internet not understanding. I responded so much as to state what the space was used on, if the person doesnt then understand they obviousl jsut dont understand and i cba to explain.

Plus, MOAR SPACE *** tbh.

I got fed up of running out of space when i had 1.75TB of space, so when i bought this PC, i decided to get more than id need so as to not run out for AGES, and to be able to RAID them all up, rather than buying 1tb at a time, and then in a year buying a 2tb drive and so on and not having the redundancy.

Although I am annoyed that 1.5tb drives came out so soon after, as im already looking at the space and feeling like im running out, but i think thats just because %wise its not that much...even if it is around 1tb lol
 
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