Wondering how I should lay out my drive(s)?

Craig321 · 8 Jul 2007 at 14:10

Hi,

In just over a week I should be sitting here with my new PC

In it will be a 500GB hard drive. My original plan was then to save for another 500GB hard drive and mirror my main one onto it manually using Trueimage. That way if my main hard drive failed I could be back up and running within a few minutes.

I then thought I'd like to have a nice media/files hard drive where all my music, videos, files, etc. go...

Would something like this give me better performance etc. ?

200GB or 320GB: Installs, OS

500GB/750GB (if/when they get cheaper): Music, Videos, Pictures, files, swap file, some backups (game saves, appdata, favourites etc.)

500GB/750GB (if/when they get cheaper): A complete manual mirror of the above to protect against software and hardware errors.

Are there any better hard drive layouts anyone can recommend please?

Thanks,
Craig.

Greenlizard0 · 8 Jul 2007 at 14:12

Not sure about performance (compared to what? I don't understand..), but that's how I have laid out my hard drives (roughly speaking) except my backup solution is external.

Craig321 · 8 Jul 2007 at 14:15

greenlizard0 said:
Not sure about performance (compared to what? I don't understand..), but that's how I have laid out my hard drives (roughly speaking) except my backup solution is external.

More the performance of the swap file. It'd be on a separate hard drive, would it speed things up nicely being on a separate drive?

The above layout, as long as I kept backups of save games and appdata, would also allow me to rebuild XP extremely easily I would have thought ?

Still not sure if it's the best layout to go with though, there might be other better ones

TheVoice · 8 Jul 2007 at 15:12

Give Windows a 20-25GB partition, and use that for just Windows and your programs. If you play games, install those to a separate partition - that way you won't have to re-install them if you format. It's also worth keeping your documents, music etc on a different partition, so if Windows fails you don't have to fight to get your personal stuff back.

That's how I have mine, and it's proven quite effective. Makes it that little bit easier to format and start clean - there's still stuff that needs to be copied or backed up, but it's far easier.

Craig321 · 8 Jul 2007 at 16:39

I could do it the partition way, but then I'm not really protected against hardware failure

I really don't mind reinstalling my applications/games when I format Windows, so maybe the setup I suggested above would be best?

fobose · 8 Jul 2007 at 18:09

What about having RAID 1 on 2x500gb with 40GB partition for windows? That way if one of them failed you dont have to spend ages reinstalling stuff?

Or as the voice said have a smaller partition just for windows and install your games on the larger partition?

joshlane · 8 Jul 2007 at 19:53

i have similar setup as the above posts with a srive dedicated to 'my documents' a simple right click on the main docs icon and reset the target to the drive and partition and yourt well away, simple and effective!

Magic Man · 9 Jul 2007 at 12:43

In terms of the swap file, if you have two drives and the OS is on one and you install games etc. on the other, would it be more beneficial for the swap file to be on the OS drive (from the point of view of best use in games) as opposed to on the games drive (from the point of view of best use in Windows)

Or... install both OS and games on the one drive (separate partitions) and the swap file and user data etc. on the second drive...?

Aelred89 · 9 Jul 2007 at 16:32

Magic Man said:
In terms of the swap file, if you have two drives and the OS is on one and you install games etc. on the other, would it be more beneficial for the swap file to be on the OS drive (from the point of view of best use in games) as opposed to on the games drive (from the point of view of best use in Windows)

Or... install both OS and games on the one drive (separate partitions) and the swap file and user data etc. on the second drive...?

Similar to my setup atm

Craig321 · 10 Jul 2007 at 00:22

fobose said:
What about having RAID 1 on 2x500gb with 40GB partition for windows? That way if one of them failed you dont have to spend ages reinstalling stuff?

Or as the voice said have a smaller partition just for windows and install your games on the larger partition?

Problem with that is I don't really have any solution for software error, RAID 1 would only protect me against hardware error, which isn't very often at all.

Craig.

fobose · 10 Jul 2007 at 09:34

What about having an external drive aswell? That way you would be covered, unless your house burnt down (god forbid).

Craig321 · 10 Jul 2007 at 18:11

fobose said:
What about having an external drive aswell? That way you would be covered, unless your house burnt down (god forbid).

Yeah, I could do to cover me against e.g. PSU failure causing everything to break (although my PSU cost £100 so I should hope it wouldn't take hardware out with it).

So I could do:

200-320GB: Installs, OS
500-750GB: Files, pictures, videos, documents, page file (maybe), backup of favourites & game saves
500-750GB external: mirror of above.

I guess the above would be the safest backup solution for software and hardware failure

fobose said:
What about having an external drive aswell? That way you would be covered, unless your house burnt down (god forbid).

Trust me, if the house started burning down I'd take my PC, or at least my main hard drive with me

Craig.

fobose · 10 Jul 2007 at 21:48

I still think you should RAID 1 2x 500GB with 40GB windows partiton / 426GB (rest of 500) and then have a 500GB external backup.

RAID 1 saves you loads of hassel of reinstalling all your stuff if one of the drive fails, and there is no down time of your PC.

750GB is a waste of money imo, just get 4x 500GB for the price of 2x 750 (RAID 1 2x 500 each to give you 1TB of space

)

Phil2008 · 10 Jul 2007 at 22:18

fobose said:
I still think you should RAID 1 2x 500GB with 40GB windows partiton / 426GB (rest of 500) and then have a 500GB external backup.

RAID 1 saves you loads of hassel of reinstalling all your stuff if one of the drive fails, and there is no down time of your PC.

750GB is a waste of money imo, just get 4x 500GB for the price of 2x 750 (RAID 1 2x 500 each to give you 1TB of space )

Wouldnt that be a bit noisy with the 4 motors of the hdds? I think im gonna upgrade my 200gb hdd to.....

80gb or 120gb as my c: drive for: OS, appz, docs and pics
500gb as my d: drive for: Games, photos, music and downloads

I have a 320gb external as a backup: Image of c: drive, docs,pics,photos, music and game saves

fobose · 10 Jul 2007 at 22:40

speedy2004 said:
Wouldnt that be a bit noisy with the 4 motors of the hdds? I think im gonna upgrade my 200gb hdd to.....

I have 3 seagate's ATM - 2x 7200.9's and a 7200.8 and I cant hear them just sitting here idle, if I am copying stuff to them or whatever then yeah they make a noise but its doesn't sound any louder than when I just had the .8 on its own.

Perhaps if I had 2x RAID 1 arrays and both were reading/writing at same time then it could be a little noisy.