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Storage Architecture

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  • Hard Drives
  • Storage
Last response: in Storage
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March 5, 2011 4:43:00 PM

I'm wondering about my HHD and SSD set up. I want to do a lot of mutitasking with Visual studio, Web Browsing, Eclispe, Excel and Word.

I"m looking at buying this system...

Processor: i5 2500K
Mother Board: MSI P67A-GD65 (B3) LGA 1155
Ram: G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1333
Power Supply: Cooler Master 500W
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912
DVD Drive: ASUS Black 24X
HDD: Samsung 1TB 7200
SSD: OCZ Vertex 2 80GB


how should I set up my storage? and or what should I change?





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a c 415 G Storage
March 5, 2011 8:02:39 PM

Basically you want to install the OS and your apps on the SSD, and keep your data files on the hard drive. I decided to leave my user profile on the SSD as well since that's where things like Temporary Internet Files end up, and I figured it would speed up my browser. But I don't store any of my own stuff in the "My Documents" tree - it's all on the hard drive. I hate using "My Documents" because so many applications have their own idea of what folders should go into it.

When I ran Visual Studio 2008 on a hard drive there were certain tasks (like selecting the "properties" of a project or doing MSDN Online searches) that took several seconds - they're now almost immediate with everything installed on the SSD.
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March 5, 2011 8:05:43 PM

Ok cool.

And do i need a particualar set up for the HDD? I have no clue what raid 0 / 1 /5 / 10 means or how to use it. Can someone explain that?
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a c 143 G Storage
March 5, 2011 8:15:59 PM

I would run your SATA controller for both your SSD & hard drive on AHCI and not on IDE or RAID.
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March 5, 2011 8:17:44 PM

can yo explain why and what that is?
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a c 415 G Storage
March 5, 2011 10:12:31 PM

IDE is for backwards compatibility with older operating systems like Windows XP. It's not recommended for use with modern OSs like Windows 7 since it doesn't include all of the features of AHCI, the current disk interface spec.

RAID is only for grouping multiple drives together to get better performance and/or reliability. It can complicate things a fair bit and if you don't know what it is then it's probably best to just steer clear of it.
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March 12, 2011 1:43:51 PM

I appreciate the info on this thread, as I have also recently added a second drive for storage. I moved my documents to the storage disc and it has improved performance. However, I have space for a third drive, and I hit upon an idea. I wondered if I could improve performance a bit more by moving applications to a third drive, dedicating each drive to a specific function. Note that I am running XP and I frequently multi-task now that I have a dual monitor setup. Its not uncommon for me to be watching videos, surfing the net and downloading torrents simultaneously. I'm curious if this will be of any benefit or if it will only complicate things for my current OS. Opinions please.
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a c 415 G Storage
March 13, 2011 3:58:43 AM

Moving files onto multiple disks can improve performance if it can split up I/O activity that's causing a bottleneck. To know whether it's going to help you need to monitor your disk I/O to see if your disk queues are excessive (which typically means "> 1" on a workstation), which programs are causing the disk I/O, and what files they're accessing. If you're using Windows 7 then the Resource Monitor can be a great tool to check on this.

But you should understand that disks are inherently slow devices, and even if every file was on its own disk they can still be the bottleneck in a system. In situations where you're doing a lot of random reading and writing of small files (which typically includes booting the system and starting up programs), the only real solution is to use a disk that's inherently faster, such as an SSD (solid state disk).

You should also know that downloading and watching videos are NOT big loads for a disk subsystem. Unless you're plugged into an institutional Internet backbone, your Internet connection is a LOT slower than your disk drive. Similarly, watching video only requires a transfer rate of around 2-3MByte/sec, a drop in the bucket for modern drives which can transfer data at more then 10X that rate, even if the file is located on the disk cylinders with the least performance.
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