Performance Set Up - 2 Drives -Non RAID

[Robot1501]

Hi First time poster, long time reader.

I recently built a gaming system(e6750, P5KC, 2gb, 8800gt), which i have networked with my 360 and for which my hard drive(320GB) is very rapidly filling up.... I regularly game while my girlfriend streams data from the same 320 GB drive to the xbox360 and it works flawlessly. So today, I treated myself to a new 500 GB seagate 7200.11 drive to accommodate our library.

Now my question is the following.

What is the best way to set up my system, from a performance perspective (remember the gaming!) given that I have two physical drives...

Some recommend separating the OS from programs and files, but my research on this yields contrasting opinions...

1. OS on One Drive (320) - Programs and Files on another (500)
2. OS and Programs on One Drive (320) - Files on Another (500)
3. OS and Programs on One Drive (320) - Files and PAGESYS file on Another (500)
4. Something else .....

I know i could RAID0 it (too risky and too lazy to spend the time) or have purchased a raptor, but i couldn't bring myself to purchase a raptor given that in the next year or two i should be able to get a 32GB SSD.

Given my current set up... What would you do to optimize overall system speed and performance?

Thanks again.

Robot1501

 

[geofelt]

The basic principle is to separate the activity to different drives. In your case, try to arrange it so that the streaming data is on a different drive from the one that your games use.

Things change, so optimizing is probably a useless activity. I would probably pick option 3.

 

[Robot1501]

Option 3 was what i had planned on doing...

I question if the pagefile.sys transfer to another drive will have an noticeable impact. Ideally game map load times would decrease, but i don`t think that will happen under this set up.

Robot1501

 

[ZOldDude]

Let the GF use the old drive and use the 7200.11 yourself.
Install the OS and set the PF to 2GB (4GB if you installed Vista)...then install the OS updates.
Use TuneUp Utilities 2008 to clean up registry and defrag the registry...then use it to defrag the HD.

Now that the OS and PF are both on the fastest part of the HD go ahead and install whatever you want.
The 7200.11 reads and writes faster than just about anything under 15K rpm (even a Raptor) and Tigerdirrect has them onsale for $99 (500GB + 32MB cashe) this week if you want to pick another one up.

 

[Robot1501]

Thanks for your suggestion...

So if I am to understand you...

Using a single 7200.11 Drive optimized with this tune up software will be faster than using 2 drives (7200.11 and a 7200.10) as a result of the 7200.10 being slower...

This is where i have difficulty understanding what will actually work the best. There does not seem to be a consensus on the best way to do this.

I will give this a shot!

Robot1501