Need harddrive configuation recomendation

[zarrensanders]

I have a Gigabyte Sniper 2 motherboard with a 2600K and am looking for the best configuation for my operating System harddrive. I already have the drives but can't decide which way will be best. Windows 7 64bit.
Patriot 60gig sata III SSD
WD 300gig 10000rpm raptor SATA II
WD 500gig 7200rpm Black SATA III (if used as OS drive it will be partitioned as 2x250gig)
I also have a Silverstone Harddrive Boost device and a High Point PCI-X 2port SATA II card (none raid)

I am thinking of using the SSD for Z68 cacheing and the 500gig for an OS drive since those are the only two SATA III devices I have.

And then the Raptor would be a nice working drive for music editing, sample retreval, DJing with Traktor Pro, etc.

If you guys can think of a better configuration please let me know. (without buying anything else that is).

 

[danraies]

Even though the 7200rpm drive is sata III and the 10000rpm drive is sata II, the 10000rpm drive is still going to be faster. No mechanical HDD is going to saturate sata II speeds, so the speed of the drive will be restricted by the rpm, making the 10000rpm drive faster.

Using the SSD as a boot drive is going to be significantly faster than using the SSD as a cache for the 10000rpm drive. If it were me I would use the SSD as a boot drive, use the 10000rpm drive to install programs, and then use the 7200rpm drive for storage of media and other things.

 

[Zenthar]

I second danraies's suggestion.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

I would move the OS, programs and the page file to the velociraptor. It's much more important for the OS to have the faster access times. The 500GB should be fine for music editing as that stuff is more sequential access anyway. If you use a lot of different programs then IMO the SSD is best used to caching.

 

[danraies]

I would move the OS, programs and the page file to the velociraptor. It's much more important for the OS to have the faster access times. The 500GB should be fine for music editing as that stuff is more sequential access anyway. If you use a lot of different programs then IMO the SSD is best used to caching.

Do you have any evidence for that claim in terms of benchmarks? Not to question, but I've never seen a good argument for SSD caching - especially when the SSD is large enough to house the operating system. I agree that it's important for the OS to have faster access time, but the access time on a properly configured SSD is going to be much better than an HDD with an SSD for caching.

Here's Tom's reviews on SSD caching (the link is to the overview page, but there's plenty of benchmarks before it):
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-z68-express-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching,2938-9.html

 

[Zenthar]

Might be a stupid question, but if someone already has a dedicated SSD for the OS, can he still use SSD caching with a "program" or "media" drive?

 

[danraies]

Might be a stupid question, but if someone already has a dedicated SSD for the OS, can he still use SSD caching with a "program" or "media" drive?

It is my understanding (though I have never done this) that if you have two SSDs you can use one as a standard boot drive or storage drive and use the other for caching on a standard HDD. However any SSD used for storage cannot be used for as cache with an HDD and any SSD used as cache for an HDD cannot be used to store data.

 

[zarrensanders]

Well I do use several programs and my OS drive usually stays around 150gigs of data. I have some WD Green 3TB drives that currently have samples for Sony's Acid 7 Pro. Its doing a really good job but every now and then there is a sec or two of delay when playing a sample. I have about 300 gigs of samples so moving them to the WD Black 7200rpm sounds like a good idea. Only heard good things about a WD Black, this will be my first one.
I think the OS will go back on the Raptor and then use the SSD for cacheing. Maybe the Z68 will get smart and start cacheing my frequently used samples as well.

I've had my current build, (775 e8400 @3.6ghz, 4gigs ram),so long I'm almost afraid to tear it down. But this is a I7 2600K were talking about with 16gigs ram, somebody convince me its going to be better!

 

[danraies]

Well I do use several programs and my OS drive usually stays around 150gigs of data.

If you were to boot from the SSD you can keep your programs stored on a different drive.

Also, system files get accessed far more than you could ever access any of your media files - it's the system files that will get cached.