Best HD setup

[CaptainK]

I have been getting all kinds of conflicting info. that has me confused so I'll ask here as well (I went through the FAQ's and it helped a little but I still need some direction)

I am looking for what will be the best possible setup for my machine.
I am currently running the following....
40 gig ata100 drive (Primary MASTER)
52X cdrom (Secondary MASTER)
10x burner (Secondary SLAVE)

I am replacing the 10x burner with a 16x dvd+/-rw drive and am adding a 120 gig ata133 drive which will become my new master and use the 40 gig as a slave drive (work drive for video editing).

What will be the 'best' way to set these four drives up?

Thanks in advance.

 

[blah]

"M+S"
1. 120+CD
2. DVD+40

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[sjonnie]

Buy a $10 2-channel controller card and plug that into your PCI-bus, that way you can avoid Master/Slave problems altogether.

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[Crashman]

Blah has the right answer. If you'd like that answer explained, it would take at least 2 paragraphs.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[CaptainK]

Hmmm, so the DVD +/-RW should be the secondary master? Never really though of that.

 

[Crashman]

Basically it's a matter of arranging drives by priority of bandwidth. You need your writer to get a constant stream of data for best results, therefor you make it master. But since your boot drive is primary master, your writer is secondary master.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[CaptainK]

I thought is was a bad thing to mix optical drives and hard drives on the same bus?

Need one more opinion,,,,, I messed up when ghosting my 40 gig to the 120 last night,,,,, I had my 40 gig partitioned into 2 drives and when I ghosted the info, I did a disc copy rather than a partition copy so ghost copied the partition as well so now my 120 gig drive is partitioned. Really didn't want that so would it be worth it to blow away the partition on the 120 gig drive and re-ghost everything back over one partition at a time (from the 40 gig drive) that way I will have one big drive un-partitioned?

Thanks again!

 

[Crashman]

Back in the days when optical drives were PIO mode and hard drives were UDMA mode, you'd have performance problems with both drives on the same chain. Those days are over, we have better drives AND better controllers now.

You could start over with ghost, but if you have partition magic you could simply delete the second partition and expand the first one to fill all the empty space.

Personally, I prefer 2 partitions on my main drive, the first partition is always faster. That's because the first partition is written on the outer part of the disk platters. And I like my OS and programs to run from the fastest part of the drive, relegating the second partition to storage.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[CaptainK]

Then I think I'll leave the partition intact because I have my OS and all of my programs installed on that partition (C) and everything else is on the other (D).

With the optical drives, guess I need to get out of the old school thinking huh? Thanks again for all of the information!!

 

[tjchino]

crash... that has to be the most helpful comment i've seen on hard drive partitioning. while, on the subject... i've seen posts recommend something along the following lines:
drive 1/partition 1: os (~40gig)
drive 1/partition 2: programs (~60 or so)
drive 2/single partition: files/documents/etc...

is that more or less what you recommend. i noticed that you said you would put the os and programs on the same drive. is that always the case? if you had more drives would you do it diffently? also, i've seen people recommend pci controller cards (so as not to have to put more than one drive on a ribbon), what's your take on that? recommend any brand in particular?
thanks.

 

[Crashman]

I can't fill my 40GB partition with simple program files. I could fill it with data output from some programs, but that's a good use for the second partition.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[silverpig]

Why do you need a 40 GB partition just for the OS?

35 GB for OS and programs

s signature has been formatted to fit your scr

 

[tjchino]

actually, i have no idea what size partition to make.

here's what i'm working with:
2 120gb ide hard drives
1 dvd/cd writer
1 dvd rom
and an abit is7

what do you think is the best setup i could do on that?

particularly what drives should be on what channels, what partition sizes, and what to put on the partitions.

thanks!

 

[jammydodger]

I have my 2x120Gigs in RAID0 partitioned as follows:
1)OS =10Gig
2)Games+other large progs = 40Gig
3)Music and documents = 40Gig
4)Video files +nething else really big = 150Gig

 

[sjonnie]

actually, i have no idea what size partition to make.

Make a small OS partition on your primary drive. I have my WD740GD divided into 16GB OS and the rest which I use for less frequently accessed files (webserver/ftp server/backup). I have my critical data on a 120GB RAID10 array, 1 partition, and downloads go to a 240GB RAID0 array, again 1 partition.

The best setup you could do with 2 120GB drives is use one for OS + data backup and the other as pagefile / frequently accessed data.

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