Best way to install/setup windows 7 ultimate for gaming using 2 HDD.

[Tarvaln]

I've got a new rig coming with two Samsung f3 spinpoint 7400 rpm 1TB drives on a ASUS Crosshair IV Formula Motherboard (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/988) with 4GB of RAM. I'll be installing Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit for the first time. I'm wondering what is the best way to configure my HDD/Windows 7 for gaming.

I know of two methods:
1) RAID 0 : I heard this is great... for moving large files and other things that don't effect gaming that much. I've read that this could also cause Windows 7 to run a little slower due to the page files being written/read from 2 HDD. The benefit of this would be shorter load times in games. The bad would be one drive failing and I lose everything.

2) Windows 7 on one drive, Paging file on the other : I've been told this could help improve windows performance. Not sure where I would install my games on this. That's all I know about that setup.

Any thoughts on this would be great.

 

[KeypoX]

your way to worried about page files.

 

[SimMike2]

Your big concern would be with losing data with RAID 0. The pagefile stuff is not important. Personally, if you have two drives in your system, and you aren't going to RAID them, I recommend you unplug your secondary drive when you install Windows 7. When it is installed, power off and plug in the secondary drive. This is because Windows 7 has a bad habit of putting boot information on a drive other than the drive it is being installed on. This becomes a problem when you want to use Windows imaging tool to make a image backup. It won't let you simply image your operating system drive, it wants to image wherever it installed the boot partition table. So while you OS drive might be small, it will want to image everything on your secondary drive also. Safest way to keep it from doing this is only have one drive plugged in during install.

If you want the computer to fly, screw the regular hard drives and get an SSD for your OS drive.

 

[DOOA]

I second the SSD if you can.
If not, raid 0 the drives and be sure to backup to some other storage. Raid 0 is noticeably faster loading game segments in most games. Back in the Diablo2 days I ran a 3 drive raid and the venerable VooDoo 5500. I could take the teleport and get at least two shots in before most opponents could load my char and react. In WoW I get no lag in Dalaran due to a reasonably fast computer and triple Raptors pushing in the information.

Check Black Viper's site for Windows 7 tweaks for even more speed.

Be advised: if you plan any LAN parties, Windows 7 often does not network well, especially when moved to new environments.

 

[Tarvaln]

I know SSD would be the best option but I'm waiting for around x-mas before I get one of those. I think by that time SATA III drives will be a bit more common and affordable. I was just wondering since I have two HDD drives what would be the best way to configure them for gaming.

P.S. Stupid newb question. I'm getting win7 ultimate. Do I need to install both 32 and 64 bit versions to run 32 bit games/apps or just the 64 bit. I'm pretty sure I just need the 64 bit one.