Which hard drive should be used for the OS?

[gbeeri]

Hello,
I run Windows 7 64 SP1 (in case that matters),
and I'm a C++ developer, and my project is pretty big - there are thousands (and maybe even tens of) of files in my

project. We use Visual Studio as our IDE and compiler. While I compiling, the compiler does a lot of IO operations.

Usually my computer is useless while I'm compiling.

And to the question:
I have 2 HDs. One I use for the OS and program installations, and the 2nd one for data (all of the project

checkouts, virtual machines, ...).
My 2 HDs slightly differ. They are both 7200 RPM, but one of them has a 16MB cache and one only 8MB. The

documentation says the first one can handle burst of 6MB/s and the 2nd only 3MB/s. All the other parameters are the

same.
Which one should I use for the OS and which one for the data drive?
Performance benchmarks have shown that the HD is a bottleneck in my computer.

And a follow-up: I expect to replace one of the drives in a SSD in the near future. Should the SSD contain the OS,

the data, or both (if possible, volume-wise)

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[terryd75]

Hello,
I run Windows 7 64 SP1 (in case that matters),
and I'm a C++ developer, and my project is pretty big - there are thousands (and maybe even tens of) of files in my

project. We use Visual Studio as our IDE and compiler. While I compiling, the compiler does a lot of IO operations.

Usually my computer is useless while I'm compiling.

And to the question:
I have 2 HDs. One I use for the OS and program installations, and the 2nd one for data (all of the project

checkouts, virtual machines, ...).
My 2 HDs slightly differ. They are both 7200 RPM, but one of them has a 16MB cache and one only 8MB. The

documentation says the first one can handle burst of 6MB/s and the 2nd only 3MB/s. All the other parameters are the

same.
Which one should I use for the OS and which one for the data drive?
Performance benchmarks have shown that the HD is a bottleneck in my computer.

And a follow-up: I expect to replace one of the drives in a SSD in the near future. Should the SSD contain the OS,

the data, or both (if possible, volume-wise)

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Definitely! Use the ssd for the os!

 

[treefrog07]

If you are doing almost continuous compiling, then the burst speed really doesn't matter, the HDD will be continuously doing reads/writes. I would use the 16MB cache HDD for the OS and the programs because it will start and load programs a little faster then the other HDD. That would leave the 8MB cache HDD for your data. Just a thought.