Dual booting w/ 2 - 10K drives & using 2 - 7.2K in a raid 1? - Hard-Disks

I am building a new system, and was wondering if this configuration I have in mind will work.

I want to dual boot Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista 64.

1 Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/product/prod [...] 6822136011
for Windows XP

and

1 Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/product/prod [...] 6822136011
for Windows Vista 64

plus

2 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/product/prod [...] 6822136131
setup in a Raid 1 mirror for data redundancy

This will be a gaming machine. I will put all of my data files, docs, email files, movies, music, etc on the mirrored drives. I will also use the mirrored drives to store the images of the Windows XP and Vista drives. The 10K drives will hold all of the installed software and game installations of course.

I do not want to do a raid 0 for the OS drives. If they go bad, then I can replace and restore the image.

It just seems like a better idea to put each OS on its own dedicated drive. I have not researched yet if it is even possible to do a dual boot using a 2 drive configuration, but I can not image a reason why it would not work.

Thanks in advance for any relies or opinions.

Message edited by Kaillus on 05-23-2008 at 07:47:32 PM

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You would need to go into bios each time you want to swich the OS and change what drive to boot from. Or you could use some kind of hot swap tray, using 2 of them and then pulling and re-inserting the drive you want to boot from.

------------------------------ Intel DX48BT2 bone trail 2 || Q9650 with Xigmatek S1283 || 4GB Gskill DDR3 1600 || 1 - 300GB 15k SAS boot , 3 - 750GB SATA Raid 5 || Adaptec 5805 SAS RAID controller || ATI 3870 || Antec 300 Chassis with Nspire 600 watt PS
Reply to rozar

just install windows xp FIRST, on one of the raptors, and then install windows vista second, on the other drive, then you'll get a boot menu when you boot up. there's no need to switching out disks, or going into bios to change boot order. thats unnecessary

------------------------------ If fate really does exist, she hates my guys....
Reply to pinaplex

It is possible.

There are two suggestions I have:
1) Partition both of the 10k rpm drives, perhaps just cut them in half. The way I would imagine it looking when complete in disk manager would be as follows:

------------------------------------ --------------------------------------
| Windows XP 75GB | Vista Swap & Temp 75GB |
------------------------------------ --------------------------------------
| Windows Vista 75GB | XP Swap & Temp 75GB |
------------------------------------ --------------------------------------
| Storage 750GB |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Storage 750GB |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Having your swap/temp folders on separate drives should prove to be much faster in the long run. If the other drive is removed you can always revert the settings with neglible data loss (unless you care about your temp folders). I would include all of your temps, such as torrents, newsreaders, decompressors, system temp, user temp. etc. You could separate your temp/swap into different partitions but that will mostly just increase the seeking that you drive will have to do between partitions. Its not really worth it. I wouldn't really recommend partitioning off your storage drives for either as well.

I would also suggest during the initial installation to install both your windows XP and vista without any other harddrives in the system. That way both drives will have their independant mbrs/boot loaders and your boot drive regardless of which OS you choose will be labelled as C: which can make things a bit easier. You should be able to edit the boot.ini off of your first drive to add the installation of your second drive afterwards. You should edit both to match in case you pull the first one.

Edit: spacing way off..

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by praeses on 05-23-2008 at 11:11:29 PM

Reply to praeses

^^ Exactly like pinaplex said, although i think you would be bettter served by just hooking them all up and running them as normal sata drives, i could see using raid if you were going to do a 0 array with a back up, but setting them up with raid is useless for you, if you want to store mirrored images of you os's then just tell the computer what harddrive you want it to back up on. Your going through alot of trouble to get the same result as if you just hooked them all up normally. Also using raid is no speed increase, specially if these are sata 2 harddrives.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ Q6600@3.2g, 4 gigs 2x2 ADATA Pc 6400, XFX 8800 GTS 512 G92, GIGABITE GA-P35-DS3L, ARCTIC COOLING FREEZER PRO 7, Antec 900 case, Antec 500 earthwatt p.s. 27.5" Hannspreee monitor (oh yeah!!)
Reply to BLACKSCI

BLACKSCI wrote :

^^ Exactly like pinaplex said, although i think you would be bettter served by just hooking them all up and running them as normal sata drives, i could see using raid if you were going to do a 0 array with a back up, but setting them up with raid is useless for you, if you want to store mirrored images of you os's then just tell the computer what harddrive you want it to back up on. Your going through alot of trouble to get the same result as if you just hooked them all up normally. Also using raid is no speed increase, specially if these are sata 2 harddrives.

I think you miss-read. I am not mirroring the OS drives (the 150 GB drives).

I am going to mirror the 750 GB drives for data redundancy.

If either of the 150 GB drives fail, then I will just re-place/re-format/re-image, which ever is necessary.

I just thought it would be more efficient for each OS to have it's own drive. Also, if one drive fails, then I can still work off of the other in the other OS until I get the failed drive back up and running.

Reply to Kaillus

praeses wrote :

It is possible.

There are two suggestions I have:
1) Partition both of the 10k rpm drives, perhaps just cut them in half. The way I would imagine it looking when complete in disk manager would be as follows:

------------------------------------ --------------------------------------
| Windows XP 75GB | Vista Swap & Temp 75GB |
------------------------------------ --------------------------------------
| Windows Vista 75GB | XP Swap & Temp 75GB |
------------------------------------ --------------------------------------
| Storage 750GB |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Storage 750GB |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Having your swap/temp folders on separate drives should prove to be much faster in the long run. If the other drive is removed you can always revert the settings with neglible data loss (unless you care about your temp folders). I would include all of your temps, such as torrents, newsreaders, decompressors, system temp, user temp. etc. You could separate your temp/swap into different partitions but that will mostly just increase the seeking that you drive will have to do between partitions. Its not really worth it. I wouldn't really recommend partitioning off your storage drives for either as well.

I would also suggest during the initial installation to install both your windows XP and vista without any other harddrives in the system. That way both drives will have their independant mbrs/boot loaders and your boot drive regardless of which OS you choose will be labelled as C: which can make things a bit easier. You should be able to edit the boot.ini off of your first drive to add the installation of your second drive afterwards. You should edit both to match in case you pull the first one.

Edit: spacing way off..

That's a good idea. I never thought about switching drives for temp/swap files.

Reply to Kaillus

ahh, i did misread.

------------------------------ Q6600@3.2g, 4 gigs 2x2 ADATA Pc 6400, XFX 8800 GTS 512 G92, GIGABITE GA-P35-DS3L, ARCTIC COOLING FREEZER PRO 7, Antec 900 case, Antec 500 earthwatt p.s. 27.5" Hannspreee monitor (oh yeah!!)
Reply to BLACKSCI

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