Hard Disk Setup

[olimazi]

I have 2 older Seagate Barracuda 200GB drives and 2 newer Western Digital 1TB Black drives in my system. I'm having trouble deciding how to set up Windows 7. Right now I have the OS on one of the Seagate 200GB drives, Apps on the other 200GB Seagate and use the 1TB WD Blacks for Video/Storage.

I ran some test and it seems like the Black drives are faster in almost every way than the Barracudas - aside from maybe access times - which are better for the smaller Seagate drives.

Should I pop the OS on one of the Black drives?
If so would Windows be slower since I would have the OS and also Apps on this drive, being that it's big.

I was also thinking of RAID 0 for the 2 200GB drives and install the OS there.
Or even get crazy and Short Stroke the 2-200's AND RAID 0 them for the OS 🙂 Say 50GB from each drive for 100 GB SS+RAID 0 for the OS.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Olimazi

 

[Hellhammer]

The Blacks are faster because the data density is much higher, so I would use them for OS and main storage. The best use for the Barracudas is probably as backup drives or secondary storage.

 

[Blain]

Don't overthink it.
Use one Black for the OS/Apps, the other Black for storage and dump those old Seagates.

A good SSD blows away spinning platters, no matter how you tweak the configuration.

😛 It reminds me of trying different init strings on my dialup modem to squeeze out a tiny bit more speed.

 

[olimazi]

LOL. I remember shotgunning 2 56K modems on 2 land lines and thinking I was the coolest dude on the block!

And yes, come Christmas - SSD it is.

Don't overthink it.
Use one Black for the OS/Apps, the other Black for storage and dump those old Seagates.

A good SSD blows away spinning platters, no matter how you tweak the configuration.

😛 It reminds me of trying different init strings on my dialup modem to squeeze out a tiny bit more speed.