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Discussion: General Forums / Hardware & Software Discussion - Hard drive performance question - I recently acquired a new 750 Gb hard drive. It's almost identical to the one
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09-29-2009, 10:43 AM #1
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Hard drive performance question
I recently acquired a new 750 Gb hard drive. It's almost identical to the one I have in my system now except it has a bigger cache.
Here's my set up:
On one physical drive:
C: Primary Windows installation
D: Secondary Storage partition - all my games and anything else that needs stored
E: Primary Linux partition - not really utilized
Now would I see a better performance boost from doing a RAID 0 setup, or simply using the second hard disc as a dedicated secondary storage drive?
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09-29-2009, 11:04 AM #2
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Re: Hard drive performance question
Raid 0 benefits large amounts of reading or writing so map loads for games would be impacted for example. Downside is that if one drive has issues you lose all your data so I would not recommend that for 1.5 TB of hard drive space.
I have two 250GB drives, I have my operating system on one that I install programs to, and I use the second for my OS swap file and storage. I have had less issues with swap related system slowdowns with this setup and I keep a copy of all the really important stuff on each drive so if one fails I will have the other without needing to do a redundant raid array or full backups. I used to dual boot with linux but XP has been so stable and I primarily play games so it got removed when I upgraded last time due to lack of use.
I also wouldn't bother with the partitioning of a single drive for the same OS.Just because everyone does something does not mean that it is right to do.
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09-29-2009, 11:16 AM #3
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Re: Hard drive performance question
What I listed is my current setup. I was wondering what I should do with the new drive. RAID 0 would still only give me 750 Gb of storage, just stripped between them.
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09-29-2009, 01:30 PM #4
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Re: Hard drive performance question
You are thinking of Raid 1 (where the two drives are identical to each other) instead of Raid 0 where the two separate drives are combined as a larger single drive virtually. from wikipedia:
Originally Posted by Spyder228
Raid 1 setup,RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across several disks in a way that gives improved speed at any given instant. If one disk fails, however, all of the data on the array will be lost, as there is neither parity nor mirroring. In this regard, RAID 0 is somewhat of a misnomer, in that RAID is 0 is non-redundant. A RAID 0 array requires a minimum of two drives.
Disk 1 matches Disk 2, if one fails you use the other.
Raid 0, you have one combined drive that equals the two drives, and the information is written or read from both drives at the same time. It speeds up map loads because each drive will have half the map so each drive only has to send half the data for processing. If You have two 750 GB drives and you set them up in a raid 0 array you will end up with a 1.5GB combined drive that acts like a single physical drive.Just because everyone does something does not mean that it is right to do.
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09-29-2009, 01:43 PM #5
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Re: Hard drive performance question
You know I looked it up before I posted and still messed it up. I've never been good with RAID numbers.
Think I'll just go with the dedicated storage drive.
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09-29-2009, 06:00 PM #6
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Re: Hard drive performance question
Not that it matters but I use 3 drives now in all my builds. One for OS and utilities, data storage and a RAID 0 where I get the advantage of the sum of the cache. Games and other apps where speed is appreciated go on the RAID and if it crashes (I haven't lost a RAID in two years) then I have all the program data and app data backed up to reinstall. It gives me close to raptor speed without the expense. Now, when SSD really gives me the size I saw in early prototypes I'll stack three or more as fast gets even faster.
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