OK,did my research, but still need to know something basic I think

[xringx]

I am going (wanting) to set up a 150gig Raptor Drive for my OS and 1 or 2 HD's for the rest.

In doing my research, I see that you put your OS and applications on the fast drive, and everything else on the slower drives......

So my question is....... How do you know what to put on the Raptor vs the other in terms of programs???? I have never had 2 drives, and I am filling my 250gig up pretty fast.

Do all "programs" like Office, Firefox, a game go on the Raptor and things like pics and downloads go on the other??

Can a install a non essential programs that I run rarely on the 2nd drive and have it work?

So basically, what is the division of stuff to put on what?

2 more questions..... How quiet are the Raptors? i have a Western Digital wd250 0ks and its pretty quiet. Also, if I get a 3rd for back up (just a drive for a program to copy stuff to at night) any recommendations for a program to do that? I am running Vista Premium 64bit.

Thanks for you help

 

[nhobo]

Don't waste your money on Raptors at 5 times the cost per GB. Just add another drive and put your data on it - that will speed up your system considerably.

 

[xringx]

Thank you for the advice.

Do you have any insights on my original questions?

 

[geofelt]

If you know a lot about what you do on a hard drive, and it does not change, you can get some benefits from optimizing it. Unfortunately, we don't know, and it does change. Optimizing based on incorrect assumptions will probably hurt performance.

My suggestion is to keep it simple:

Start with a 150gb raptor if you can afford it(any other 7200rpm drive if you can't).
Install the os on it, and use it until it fills up, then add another drive .

When SSD's become mainstream, then it will be time to reconsider.

 

[g-paw]

Generally you're best off putting your OS/programs on one drive/partition and data on the other. If you have to reinstall Windows, you'll have to install all the programs

 

[yabyab]

What I usually do, and that's probably not the "optimum" plan, is to have at least two hard drives.

C: is for:
1. the Operating System
2. applications(like Office, AdobePhotoshop..etc)
3. Games that I play a lot and I know I like.

D: is for:
1. my eMule download
2. Download junk
3. AdoboPhotoshop Folders - or any application that saves heavy files to a folder
4. my DSLR backup files
5. Games that I want to "Try" first
6. Basically all data files

 

[nvalhalla]

everything you want to "install" on the raptor, everything you want to "store" on the other. simple enough ?

by the way, I also don't think a raptor is a good idea. the speed they provide is no longer much faster than 7200rpm drives, the space they provide is too small by today's standards, they are unreasonably loud, and they cost more than you should probably spend on a drive. just my .02.

 

[xringx]

thanks for the advice. how about a recommendation for a fast quiet HD???

 

[Jaywill]

thanks for the advice. how about a recommendation for a fast quiet HD???

I'm probably going with one of these for my OS/Apps drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262

It scores pretty high on average read and write transfer performance, scores decent on XP startup, and is #4 on the Price/Performance chart.

You can use Tom's Hardware's performance charts and decide for yourself: http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html