which setup would be best for me?

[kopykat]

Hi all,
its time for an upgrade...
Im switching my mobo to a 939 for X2 and getting a 3800+ X2 and a 7800GTX. Now I was wondering how can I improve my hdd set up...
I work alot on photoshop for example, which requires fast hardrives for optimal performance from what I know. So I was thinkin...
1 hdd for windows only
1 hdd for programs only
1 hdd for storage + photoshop scratchdisk
1 hdd for storage

if this setup makes sense then im one step ahead already.
now whats the best performance i can get for a normal price?
I havent decided which motherboard to get yet, but i noticed all the options almost come with 4x sata 3.0gb .
so im assuming SATA II is the way to go.
I dont think i would go for a raptor or any 10,000K drive cause they are expensive, small in size, and the performance doesnt seem to be a world apart from sata II drives. I might be wrong.
gimme some input guys.
thanks.

Asus P4800 Deluxe - 3.0C - 4X256MB corsair twinx - 6800GT 256mb - sata w/8mb 160gb - 120gb w/8mb - Thermaltake purepower 480w - Thermaltake XaserIII

 

[Crashman]

Go with two drives, partition each into two partitions. The first partition will be faster than the second, and you want your programs to be on the fastest part of these disks anyways. Use the second partition of both drives for 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>

 

[kopykat]

I think ill go for 2 fast drives and set them up in a raid level 0 array. The drives wont be small 10K rpm drives. I want fast but larger drives and i dont know which would be best suited for the job. the drives I have today will stay connected as ussual for storage purposes and to backup some important stuff from the raid array once in a while.
which drives would u suggest for the raid? fastest drives possible @ 7200rpm .
And a general question regarding the raid setup, what results do you think i can expect from the raid setup?
is it correct to say that the 2 drives will be twice as fast? or is that on theoreticly correct?
thanks.

Asus P4800 Deluxe - 3.0C - 4X256MB corsair twinx - 6800GT 256mb - sata w/8mb 160gb - 120gb w/8mb - Thermaltake purepower 480w - Thermaltake XaserIII

 

[emogoch]

Crash, I'm pretty sure that HDD write from the middle out, meaning that the second partition will be on the outside of the disk, hence faster.

As for the setup, I'd suggest a RAID-0 array if you want optimal performance

<edit>Whoops... didn't read your second post... my bad</edit>

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by emogoch on 09/22/05 03:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

Ah well, most RAID controller have so much overhead as to slow your applications down, I'd probably just use the "fast" part of the drive for applications and forget RAID.

<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>

 

[Crashman]

Hmm, but the heads are at rest outside...I think hard drives go from the outside IN, and CD's from the inside OUT.

And on the subject of CD's, because the outer edges aren't as stable, I think they read fastast around 2/3 to 3/4 toward the outside, and slow the motor down to read the outer edge with high-RPM CD drives.

<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>

 

[fishmahn]

Unless they changed it, hard drives start on the outside of the disk, CDs start on the inside. That's how it was in the mid 80's anyways.

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>

 

[emogoch]

alright. I could be wrong. All I know is that that's how the NA at my old job would set up his machines, with the page file being on it's own partition as the last one with block-sizes set to the same as the page file so that he gets optimal performance from them.

 

[tiger102]

what would you say raid 0 is good for than?

 

[Crashman]

It's a good way to loose data! If you REALLY wanted RAID 0 to give you a big boost, you'd probably have to use more than 2 drives, with a hardware RAID controller. We're talking expensive stuff! And at that level, most people would choose RAID 5 or 50.

I've seen enthusiasts go as far as to buy an "inexpensive" hardware RAID card for $300, then add four drives, so they could get 200MB/s without choaking the CPU. That's purely for bragging rights.

<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>

 

[tiger102]

so one drive with 7200rpm would probably have a speed of about 40MB/s, so with two drives would you say it would run at 80MB/s?

 

[Crashman]

Actually you don't get a 100% increase. A better-performing 7200RPM drive will typically start around 75 and end around 40MB/s. And depending on the RAID controller and a few other factors, you'll get a 50-70% transfer rate increase every time you double the number of drives in your RAID 0 array.

And you'll also get longer seek times, so for extremely small files the performance will appear to be worse. Cluster size also plays a big role there.

<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>

 

[tiger102]

so would you recommend for someone to buy two harddrives and set them up for raid 0 and use them for gaming, trafering files, uncompressing large files? or is there a better way to do this? thank you.

 

[Crashman]

Due to the cost of hardware-based RAID controllers, the CPU overhead of software-based RAID controllers, and the risk to data involved, I'd go with two drives, split into partitions, with the first partition being smaller. I'd put my applications on the first partition and storage on the second for both drives.

Personally I don't like the hassel of having to set up all my applications on the second drive, so I put them all on the first drive, and use the first partition from the second drive for a buffer in such applications as uncompressing large files.

<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>

 

[tiger102]

well my motherboard, asus P5LD2 Deluxe, it comes with a build in Silicon Image 3132 Controller, so do you still recommend partition, or should i do a raid 0 setup. I understand the risk of lossing data, but would would you think will boost performance, paritioning or raid 0. Also what is better, is it better do the paritioning with one drive or two drives? thank you.

 

[Crashman]

I don't RAID because of the things I explained, but whether you use two or one drive is up to you. If you partition two drives you can make the first partition extremely small for both, which has the advantage of limitting the partition to the fastest of the fast part of the drive.

On my personal system, I used to manage two 20GB and 2 120+GB partitions, but I got tired of managing partitions and went with one 40GB and one ~70GB partition, using a backup drive for long term 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>

 

[tiger102]

no, i don't have any short term memory. i just wanted to ask for his recomandation, and he gave me some ideas other than raid which is good. many said that with raid 0 i wouldn't see any performance difference,unless i had 4 drives in raid 0. so i might experiment with it and see the performance change for myself.

 

[kopykat]

I just bought 3 74gb raptor drives.
You mean to tell me that if my only intrest is performance gain, setting them up in partitions like u suggest would be much better than setting all 3 in a RAID 0 ?
wont raid 0 on 3 drives theoreticly increase my hdd speed to 3 times faster?

so according to your method this is how I would setup my system:
1 drive with 2 partitions - one for windows and one (the one thats faster)for program files.
1 drive for with 2 partitions - one for storage of my photoshop and image files and another one (the one thats faster) for photoshop scratch disk and windows virtual memory.

would the above setup offer better performance than :
1. 3 drives in raid 0 using onboard raid controller.
or
2. 1 drive with 2 partitions - one for windows and one (the one thats faster)for program files. and 2 drives in raid 0 for photoshop storage, scratch disk and virtual memory.
?

The motherboard I got is DFI SLI DR with a nforce 4 SLI ultra chipset.

Thanks, although u confused the hell outta me.

 

[RichPLS]

Setting 3 drives up on RAID 0 would be the fastest you could do, without buying a RAID controller.
Realizing that you have tripled your chance of drive failure!
That is right, you would have 3x the chance of drive failure!
Do you have a backup data procedure implemented? If not, you should consider one.