"Boot drives"

[computeguy]

So, I often here of people using "boot drives." What are they exactly? Isn't it a small SSD in RAID 0 with an HDD to make it run faster, with the SSD being the boot drive and the HDD being the storage drive? Sometimes I see people with, say, a 1tb HDD and a 60gb SSD. Is this what it is?

 

[Dereck47]

"Boot drive" and "O/S drive" mean the same thing: It is whatever drive your operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac O/S, etc.) is installed on.

If you are using Windows then your boot drive or O/S drive is your C: drive.

 

[computeguy]

"Boot drive" and "O/S drive" mean the same thing: It is whatever drive your operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac O/S, etc.) is installed on.

If you are using Windows then your boot drive or O/S drive is your C: drive.

So why do people do this? To make it boot up faster, right? You can still access your storage drive even if you boot from your boot drive, right?

 

[Dereck47]

So why do people do this? To make it boot up faster, right?

Yes. People who have a HDD as a boot drive and want "SSD-like" performance can use a small SSD (64GB and less) as a cache drive to boost performance. It's for people who can't afford a large SSD (120GB and more) to use as a boot drive.

You can still access your storage drive even if you boot from your boot drive, right?

Yes.

 

[computeguy]

Yes. People who have a HDD as a boot drive and want "SSD-like" performance can use a small SSD (64GB and less) as a cache drive to boost performance. It's for people who can't afford a large SSD (120GB and more) to use as a boot drive.



Yes.

So, it's an SSD and an HDD in RAID 0? I knew you could do this, I just wasn't sure that this was the effect.

 

[DarkSable]

So, it's an SSD and an HDD in RAID 0? I knew you could do this, I just wasn't sure that this was the effect.

Not even close, sorry.

It's using software to set up the SSD as a cashe for the HDD - that is, the most often accessed data on the hard drive is moved to the SSD for faster access.

That being said, that's NOT A BOOT DRIVE - that's a cashe drive.

A boot drive is the drive, whether SSD or hard drive, that has your primary operating system installed on it

You buy a SSD, install windows (or whatever) on it, and use a hard drive to store data on because the ssd is small.

 

[computeguy]

Not even close, sorry.

It's using software to set up the SSD as a cashe for the HDD - that is, the most often accessed data on the hard drive is moved to the SSD for faster access.

That being said, that's NOT A BOOT DRIVE - that's a cashe drive.

A boot drive is the drive, whether SSD or hard drive, that has your primary operating system installed on it

You buy a SSD, install windows (or whatever) on it, and use a hard drive to store data on because the ssd is small.

Ah, I see. So, what does an HDD and an SDD do in RAID 0?

 

[DarkSable]

If you put them in RAID 0 you'd have a hell of a mess.

The first thing that would happen is that the hard drive would partition itself to be as small as the ssd.

Then, when data was being read or written, half of it would go to the ssd, and get written quickly, and half would go to the hard drive, and get written slowly. Thus, you'd have a backlog of data to be written to the hard drive and your computer would, most likely, crash.


Raid 0 doesn't do what you seem to think it does. Read here:
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/08/raid-levels-tutorial/