Dual Hard Drive System

[James]

A common strategy when building a PC is to install two physical hard
drives -- one for the operating system, a second one to hold data.

I'm wondering about which hard drives to use. For the data hard drive,
obviously that should be a large and fast hard drive, which today
means SATA 300 with a 16mb cache. For the operating system hard drive,
I'm wondering if an older smaller drive will suffice. The operating
system is only going to require a few gigabytes at the most. I'm
wondering if an older 40 GB with 8 mb cache SATA 100 would cause a
performance hit compared to SATA 300 16 mb cache? My thinking is that
once Windows gets fired up, most of the crucial code is loaded into
RAM anyway and hard drive accesses to the Windows directory aren't
that frequent. I'll put the page file on the media drive.

So for an operating system only drive, is hard drive speed critical?

 

[geoff]

A common strategy when building a PC is to install two physical hard

drives -- one for the operating system, a second one to hold data.

No, one to hold the OS and data and the other to hold programs, if neeeded,
and a copy of the data.

On WinBlows, I always try to seperate data from programs. The data goes
into my documents. From time to time, I will xcopy my documents to the
other drive and sometimes zip the copy and put it on a USB memory stick.

--g

 

[JR Weiss]

A common strategy when building a PC is to install two physical hard
drives -- one for the operating system, a second one to hold data.

I'm wondering about which hard drives to use. For the data hard drive,
obviously that should be a large and fast hard drive, which today
means SATA 300 with a 16mb cache. For the operating system hard drive,
I'm wondering if an older smaller drive will suffice. The operating
system is only going to require a few gigabytes at the most. I'm
wondering if an older 40 GB with 8 mb cache SATA 100 would cause a
performance hit compared to SATA 300 16 mb cache? My thinking is that
once Windows gets fired up, most of the crucial code is loaded into
RAM anyway and hard drive accesses to the Windows directory aren't
that frequent. I'll put the page file on the media drive.

So for an operating system only drive, is hard drive speed critical?

YES!!!

Actually, the common practice is to put the OS AND Applications on one fast HD,
and data on another. HD speed impact is felt more on the OS and application
drive, where pagefiles and primary caches are likely to be located. Reading
data from a slower HD won't be noticed as much, and writing data is not done as
often relatively speaking.

If you can't afford 3 Velociraptors, get 1 of them for the OS and Apps, and a
good perpendicular media HD for your data. The backup HD need not be as fast,
just reliable.

 

[Flasherly]

A common strategy when building a PC is to install two physical hard
drives -- one for the operating system, a second one to hold data.

I'm wondering about which hard drives to use. For the data hard drive,
obviously that should be a large and fast hard drive, which today
means SATA 300 with a 16mb cache. For the operating system hard drive,
I'm wondering if an older smaller drive will suffice. The operating
system is only going to require a few gigabytes at the most. I'm
wondering if an older 40 GB with 8 mb cache SATA 100 would cause a
performance hit compared to SATA 300 16 mb cache? My thinking is that
once Windows gets fired up, most of the crucial code is loaded into
RAM anyway and hard drive accesses to the Windows directory aren't
that frequent. I'll put the page file on the media drive.

So for an operating system only drive, is hard drive speed critical?

Got to go for the sweet spot, which means $CAvg into 500-750G for
around $50-60 for a good reviewed drive that isn't breaking on
everyone, and looks to live up to a 5yr warr. (whatever 5 yrs means on
advancing computer timeframes). Probably, for less chance a headache
over corrupted data and doing the RMA experience. Once the OS loads,
it's a system optimization thing -- various efficiency factors, such
as indexing or an actual allowance of planning. Yes, a minimum of two
physical drives is the way to go. Data can also be expanded to
include everything not critical to the OS, which means program
installs. I'm very dim when it comes to programmer's ideas of
programs that toss themselves into the MS concept of registered,
virtualized disk structure (ie, if it's not \Windows, then what disk
structure?). Therefore, many drives (primary/logical) will coexist
(unless hidden), one of which includes *all* installed programs (least
to mention drives defined with various subcategories of other-ly
data). Last and most import to the "more than one drive" concept is
the computer's native mode for dealing with perfunctory OS loads
(multiple operating systems), in which any one is put on the back-
burner of an overriding critical integral known for the backup. MBs
are now natively inherently fast, so the issue is one pertaining to
transferring, between separate physical drives, on separate physical
DMA channels, rebuilt binary restorations. I keep several OS states,
dating back variously and not all on HDs. Cache, 8, 16, 32, sectors,
speed, 7.2, 10, or 15K is creme, and won't mean diddley to a trashed
or infected OS. My OS is over a 5-year-old install, believe that's
what I've alloted Winderz, to a 4G primary partition, inclusive of a
swapfile that's also fine there, being undefined to any permanent
state, or in other words wouldn't be included to a likes of Norton
Enterprise for DOS. The resulting core OS images, Norton uses, are
well under 1G, and, over two drives, the restoration will occur in
1:55 seconds, discounting reboots.

 

[James]

No, if you want Windows (I assume you are using Windows?) to be slug-like
and generally unresponsive and generally make your machine feel like it is a
generation older than it really is.

On the other hand I would suggest using as fast a drive as you can afford
for your OS and something large for your data (denpending on how much data
you have)

I'd suggest either a new Western Digital Velociraptor drive (not the old
Raptors) or a new (when released) OCZ Vertex SSD for the OS drive
Or better still if you have the money, a pair of either in RAID 0

Thanks for your reply, and thanks to the other posters as well. OK,
all of you have collectively convinced me that both the Windows XP
drive and the data drive need to be as fast as possible.

How about two identical SATA 3.0 gb/sec drives arrayed in RAID 1 plus
run Win XP Backup on a daily schedule? Seems like I'd be protected
against one hard drive failure plus with MS backup I could restore the
computer to yesterday's state if I get a virus or something.

 

[Phil_12345]

James wrote:



Thanks for your reply, and thanks to the other posters as well. OK,
all of you have collectively convinced me that both the Windows XP
drive and the data drive need to be as fast as possible.

How about two identical SATA 3.0 gb/sec drives arrayed in RAID 1 plus
run Win XP Backup on a daily schedule? Seems like I'd be protected
against one hard drive failure plus with MS backup I could restore the
computer to yesterday's state if I get a virus or something.

Hi,

- It would make more sense to install Windows and all applications to
the fastest drive because this drive will be access most of the time
(swap file). Data would better to reside to another partion or
another drive. Most of the time, the data drive doesn't require to
be the fastest drive BUT better if it has lot of space for storage.
Unless you are doing database development and need to read/write/
update millions of record (database size over 500 Mb), other wise you
don't notice a diffrent of slower drive when open a word document
file.

- After install Windows, all needed applications and config everything
the way you like, make a full disk/partion image of the OS drive and
put the image file onto the data drive. If disaster strike (virus,
drive failure,...), you can always restore the OS and applications
using the image from data drive. From time to time, all you have to
worry about is making another 'external' backup of your important data/
document from data drive.

 

[meow2222]

A common strategy when building a PC is to install two physical hard
drives -- one for the operating system, a second one to hold data.

good plan

I'm wondering about which hard drives to use. For the data hard drive,
obviously that should be a large and fast hard drive, which today
means SATA 300 with a 16mb cache.

size comes first for this one imho. Speed is a nice bonus but for
reading non-program stuff it doesnt seem in any way critical.

For the operating system hard drive,
I'm wondering if an older smaller drive will suffice. The operating
system is only going to require a few gigabytes at the most. I'm
wondering if an older 40 GB

way more size than you'll ever need for OS & apps, so yes in that
respect

with 8 mb cache SATA 100 would cause a
performance hit compared to SATA 300 16 mb cache?

of course, its slower, and OS function includes hdd read & write. An
old drive is also free, and you can always upgrade it later if needed.

My thinking is that
once Windows gets fired up, most of the crucial code is loaded into
RAM anyway and hard drive accesses to the Windows directory aren't
that frequent.

its mainly noticed when starting apps

I'll put the page file on the media drive.

That I would not do. Data integrity is more important than drive
speed.

So for an operating system only drive, is hard drive speed critical?

How can we tell you if your computer speed is critical? If you have an
old drive why not use it and see. If it is an issue, there are much
more effective things you can do than upgrading sata100 to 300. The
main problems are with apps & OS IME, which can be chosen & tweaked to
greatly speed them up.


NT