Best hard drive configuration?

[Atheus]

I have a 320GB 7200RPM Seagate and a 74GB 10000RPM WD Raptor to put in my new system. What's the best way to use them?

a) OS and programs on the Seagate, swap file on the Raptor.
b) OS on the Raptor, Programs and swap on the Seagate.
c) OS and swap on the Raptor, programs on the Seagate.
or
d) something I haven't thought of???

Reasonably high end box for games, movies, photoshop and various editing software, programming and compiling, etc etc...

 

[Cogman]

This kind of depends on how much you are going to touch your swap, if it is hit a lot then putting it on the Seagate only makes sense. You will want your programs on the opposite drive as your swap is (that way you can access the program an load it into the hard drive at the same time.) As for the OS, Im not sure but I think it should be on the same drive as your programs are (I could be wrong, if the OS is not accessed much after boot then you might be better off putting it on the same drive as the Swap)

So here is what I would do,

Ram > 2GB OS && Swap on Seagate
Ram < 2GB OS && swap on Raptor

 

[imported_Tick]

I'd definitly put OS and programs on the Seagate, and swap on the raptor. Also, make sure that photoshop is hitting the raptor for scratch disk.

 

[thegorx]

What I'd do is

The OS and default swap file on the Raptor and most of the programs because I don't think for the most part there will be a lot of reading or writing going on there after boot, unless the swap file or the like is in use.

The the larger drive for storage, and back up of the Raptor
then I'd try games on both drive to see if it really make a difference, and then I'd most likely put large file games on that drive.

Then if I was doing video editing I'd get another large drive just for archiving after editing. Save to one drive and edit to another, and see if that makes a difference.

Basically, if you're multi-tasking you'll want to separate the reading and writing of the drives, I think that would be the most important, leave the Raptor for the little busy work.

 

[Atheus]

I don't really want to put game/app files on the Raptor, it's just not big enough these days, and I already have a 320GB RAID1 setup in my server for storage... I guess I wouldn't be hitting the swap much with 2GB of fast DDR2 in there...

I could put OS and programs on the Raptor, image the whole lot somewhere else in case of failure, and put programs and data on the Seagate. That way I can be reading data from the program files on the big drive, and if it wants to hit the OS or swap, it can do that on a separate channel. Make sense?

 

[thegorx]

Sure, just make the Raptor the core of the system, then the large drive for large data so it won't get slowed down by what the Raptor is doing with the OS, light data, and the swap file. The programs themselves more than likely won't matter just the size of the data being read and saved.