Gaming Madness Community Forum

I have a question that i have been trying to find the answer for some time and have yet to find an anwser...
Maybe someone here with a little pc tech knowledge could help me.
I have been working on my own pc for a number of years but i might be doing things wrong.
I currently have 2 WD 160 Hard drives running in a normal configuration (NO RAID USED)
The last time i formatted i did not create a partition to install my os on one drive ..
I use each drive as its own partition and just installed the os on one drive...... I use the second drive for all my downloading and saving of movies, mp3's ,programs...you get the issue.
Now when i install anything i just install it on the drive that currently has my os on.
Question :
1- Should i create a partition on one drive for just an os install .....
Example : Operating system = 8 Gigs (just for example)
Leaving appx 150 GIGS .... that is available use for all other programs ...games ..etc.
Os = C:/Drive
Other programs = D:/ Drive
Last 160 HD= E:/Drive

2- Should i use RAID when formatting from a fresh start or just use them as an unraided formatt...... Yes they are both identical drives.

3- If Raid 0 is used....... from what i have read both drives work like a single drive and speed up the performance of both drives....
Is this really true and have a very noticible difference.

4- What raid should be used if not using raid 0 ?
and how should it be formatted...

At the current time i am running Vista and i am about to rollback to XP so before i do ... I wanna make sure that i am doing it right considering it takes so much time and i would hate to fudge it up.
Yeah Vista sucks A$$ thats why i want to go back to XP.

All help is appreciated !

Intimidator wrote:I have a question that i have been trying to find the answer for some time and have yet to find an anwser...
Maybe someone here with a little pc tech knowledge could help me.
I have been working on my own pc for a number of years but i might be doing things wrong.
I currently have 2 WD 160 Hard drives running in a normal configuration (NO RAID USED)
The last time i formatted i did not create a partition to install my os on one drive ..
I use each drive as its own partition and just installed the os on one drive...... I use the second drive for all my downloading and saving of movies, mp3's ,programs...you get the issue.
Now when i install anything i just install it on the drive that currently has my os on.
Question :
1- Should i create a partition on one drive for just an os install .....
Example : Operating system = 8 Gigs (just for example)
Leaving appx 150 GIGS .... that is available use for all other programs ...games ..etc.
Os = C:/Drive
Other programs = D:/ Drive
Last 160 HD= E:/Drive

i do this on a regular basis, it just makes things simpler. i usually make a 20 gig partition, then the rest in a second partition.

2- Should i use RAID when formatting from a fresh start or just use them as an unraided formatt...... Yes they are both identical drives.

this is really a matter of preference. if you have the drives, and the capability, then why not? :hwsb2:

3- If Raid 0 is used....... from what i have read both drives work like a single drive and speed up the performance of both drives....
Is this really true and have a very noticible difference.

it is true in that you can perform reads & writes simultaneously, which does yield a marginal to moderate (depending on your disks) performance increase. however, should one disk in the array fail, you lose the data from _both_ disks. since the data is striped across both disks, it is impossible to rebuild the array upon disk failure. there is also processor overhead involved with the array, unless you have a dedicated raid controller (most motherboards that have raid controllers on-board are _not_ dedicated controllers. they offload the processing to the cpu).

4- What raid should be used if not using raid 0 ?
and how should it be formatted...

raid 0 has better throughput and gives you the full capacity of your disks. but like i said above, it comes with a price.

raid 1 is for redundancy. it takes two disks, and keeps them identical. as such, there is an extra write operation for every disk write, since it has to write the same data to both drives. however, when one disk fails you lose nothing, since the data is mirrored on the other disk and rebuilding the array is trivial. also, keep in mind that you only get to use half of your total disk space since one drive is mirroring the other. two 160gb disks in raid1 = 160gb total storage space.

so, depending on what purpose you have in mind for that specific machine should dictate what raid array you'll be using. or, you can just leave it up to fate and use them as individual disks, and suffer no performance gains/penalties at all.

formatting? you mean the filesystem? ntfs for windows... ext3 for linux (or reiserfs if you want).

At the current time i am running Vista and i am about to rollback to XP so before i do ... I wanna make sure that i am doing it right considering it takes so much time and i would hate to fudge it up.
Yeah Vista sucks A$$ thats why i want to go back to XP.

All help is appreciated !

np. make sure you have the driver for your raid chip on a floppy disk before you try to install xp.

Actually, I think your doing it right regarding not patitioning the drives and having one drive for OS and the other for your files. If you install all your programs on the OS drive, your programs will run faster as it won't have to deal with a SATA controller. Most of the newer mobos (like my EVGA 680i) SATA controllers are very close in performance to a SATA controller card. Just make sure you match your pagefile to the amount of memory (I've tried a few different configs and found that using the "Windows Managed" setup to be the best.

Now, if you want the best setup, raid 0 your OS drive (2 drives req.) and get yourself a large drive for file storage (3 drives all together).

Archangel wrote: Now, if you want the best setup, raid 0 your OS drive (2 drives req.) and get yourself a large drive for file storage (3 drives all together).

Wouldn't it just be alot easier to have to large drives instead of three ?
If thats the case I am fine with the size of the drives...
I download at least 2 movies a night, and the next day i convert them and burn them to disc instantly so i ususally dont keep alot of unused bullshit on my drives .
Since i put Vista on my box alot of wierd bullshit has been happeneing which alot are not consistant and i have not found many solutions to some of the problems..... and it seemed to slow down the tower alot compared to XP...thats why i wanna dump this shitty os.
Right at the current time i really dont have the cash to upgrade the tower to my likings so i am trying to squeeze out every inch of speed this bad boy can give me.
Thanx for the help !

Archangel wrote:Actually, I think your doing it right regarding not patitioning the drives and having one drive for OS and the other for your files. If you install all your programs on the OS drive, your programs will run faster as it won't have to deal with a SATA controller. Most of the newer mobos (like my EVGA 680i) SATA controllers are very close in performance to a SATA controller card. Just make sure you match your pagefile to the amount of memory (I've tried a few different configs and found that using the "Windows Managed" setup to be the best.

? how is the drive being accessed if the sata controller is not being used? even if the drives are not in a raid configuration, it all goes through the controller.

and regarding the windows pagefile: i've found that setting it to a static value, whether it be the same amount of ram or 1.5x or whatever, is the best method to use. that way your pagefile doesn't get fragmented (if you set it to static when setting up windows).

hwsb wrote:

Archangel wrote:Actually, I think your doing it right regarding not patitioning the drives and having one drive for OS and the other for your files. If you install all your programs on the OS drive, your programs will run faster as it won't have to deal with a SATA controller. Most of the newer mobos (like my EVGA 680i) SATA controllers are very close in performance to a SATA controller card. Just make sure you match your pagefile to the amount of memory (I've tried a few different configs and found that using the "Windows Managed" setup to be the best.

? how is the drive being accessed if the sata controller is not being used? even if the drives are not in a raid configuration, it all goes through the controller.

and regarding the windows pagefile: i've found that setting it to a static value, whether it be the same amount of ram or 1.5x or whatever, is the best method to use. that way your pagefile doesn't get fragmented (if you set it to static when setting up windows).

My pagefile actually has its own 10-gig partition/drive - and that is the ONLY thing that partition is used for.

hwsb wrote:

Archangel wrote:Actually, I think your doing it right regarding not patitioning the drives and having one drive for OS and the other for your files. If you install all your programs on the OS drive, your programs will run faster as it won't have to deal with a SATA controller. Most of the newer mobos (like my EVGA 680i) SATA controllers are very close in performance to a SATA controller card. Just make sure you match your pagefile to the amount of memory (I've tried a few different configs and found that using the "Windows Managed" setup to be the best.

? how is the drive being accessed if the sata controller is not being used? even if the drives are not in a raid configuration, it all goes through the controller.

and regarding the windows pagefile: i've found that setting it to a static value, whether it be the same amount of ram or 1.5x or whatever, is the best method to use. that way your pagefile doesn't get fragmented (if you set it to static when setting up windows).

Files will get fragmented whether or not you let Windows config or set a specific number (I've read and tried Black whats his name's config too).

As far as the first question, you just answered it yourself. I was only speaking in reference if you were to use the drives in a rais configuation.

Archangel wrote:
Files will get fragmented whether or not you let Windows config or set a specific number (I've read and tried Black whats his name's config too).

i was under the impression that if you set your pagefile to a static value, with the min & max values the same, that the actual pagefile will be created on disk and not be moved from that point on. since it is set at one size, windows just pads out the file length until it is needed.

As far as the first question, you just answered it yourself. I was only speaking in reference if you were to use the drives in a rais configuation.

eh? /me confused. i thought you were saying that if the drives are not in a raid array it somehow bypasses the sata controller to access the disks. whatever, you wanna get high? :hwsb2:

hwsb wrote:



you wanna get high? :hwsb2:

ok :hwsb2:

hwsb wrote:

i was under the impression that if you set your pagefile to a static value, with the min & max values the same, that the actual pagefile will be created on disk and not be moved from that point on. since it is set at one size, windows just pads out the file length until it is needed.

Same here.