How To Best Take Advantage of Dual Hard Drives in Windows 7 64

ChronicleMe

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Oct 6, 2014
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I have a PC with windows 7 64. My config is as follows:
AMD FX-8350
GA-78LMT-USB3 6.0 Gigabyte Motherboard
8gb PC3-12800 Ram
AMD Radeon R9 390 8gb graphics card

Seagate 300gb ST3320620AS ATA Device
Hitachi 1TB HDS721010CLA632 ATA Device
Toshiba 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard drive

I have everything running on the hitachi hard drive currently. I play games such as Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, Battlefield 4, Minecraft etc...

I would like to take advantage of the second hard drive if I could get more speed out of the system by doing so. I have the system backed up to my home network.

So is there any way to speed this up by using striped volumes etc?
 
you could run the 300 gig and hitachi in a striped volume it would give you a 600 gig raid 0 volume and you would have a 700 gig in a simple volume. you might see a performance increase on the raid 0 partition but it might not be as much as you want.
 
Points:

1) SSD:
This will mainly benefit Windows boot times and opening programs. For GAMES it mainly affects loading times of the game and levels. It can be handy for games like Skyrim with frequent loading but that's about it.

2) RAID0:
Same caveats as SSD just a lot slower though cheaper to implement. It's also less reliable than a single HDD.


What EXACTLY are you trying to "speed up"?

Basically drives are for storage so only affect when things are being loaded. Yes, games talk to memory but for the most part they move the important data to System and Video RAM and work with that (CPU to System and GPU to Video) so that's why changing drives doesn't help improve frame rates.

In the PAST a faster drive could help prevent stutter but modern games with rare exception as I said before move that data in advance to the much faster System and Video memory.
 
What would I do with your system?

The ONLY thing I can recommend which again is more about Windows snappiness is to add an SSD. Basically just CLONE the 300GB main drive to something like a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO (see pcpartpicker) for about $100USD or so.

I'd also upgrade to Windows 10.

Something like:
1) Buy SSD
2) Test System memory using MEMTEST www.memtest.org
3) add SSD physically

4) CLONE using something like Machrium Reflect Free (make sure it has a VERIFY option)
5) Shut down, and remove the 300GB HDD (keep untouched just in case)
6) Boot to test (if boot fails, may have to go into BIOS and ensure SSD is the first boot drive)

7) For Samsung SSD's, install Samsung Magician (update firmware, manage profiles, test etc) or similar software from other SSD manufacturers.
8) Create a backup Image (I use Acronis True Image) to another HDD if you have space
9) Upgrade to Windows 10

10) Verify no issues (such as video drivers)

Other:
If you upgrade to W10, I also suggest running a game benchmark before and after. If your video driver defaults to a basic Windows version then it would be obvious as the score would be much lower. Or if some other issue is affecting performance.
 

ChronicleMe

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I plan on upgrading to Win 10 on the 29th when it is released. Where can I find a game benchmarking program?

I feel like I am bottlenecked w the hard drives because I ran a windows assesment and got 7.9 in every category except "primary hard disk" which I got a 5.9 in.
I am currently having issues because I upgraded to a Radeon MSI R9 390 but I believe that is a driver issue... Thanks for the tips. I was trying to speed it up without having to buy anything else.


 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


1. The Windows Experience Index (WEI), is pretty useless as a benchmark.
2. 5.9 in that is absolutely standard for an HDD.
3. An SSD will help the whole system
4. Don't depend on getting the Win 10 update directly on July 29. The Upgrade will probably be delayed for your particular device.
 
Benchmark?

I just use the older program 3DMark2001 which is free and fairly small. I've tested in W7, W8 and W10.

Download:
http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/legacy
Basically just a quick test to see if performance is significantly different. I got something like 68,000 for W8.1 and 68,400 for W10 though it varies slightly every time.

Anyway, the performance should be almost identical but my W10 installation was fresh so I gained a bit over my W8.1 with more programs running.