Looking for Hard Drive / partition advice

[alpha88]

I'm running on an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium, which has 4 SATA-II ports (that can run Raid 0)

Currently I have a 73gig raptor as well as an 8 meg cache 200 gig SATA drive (which I assume is sata-I), as well as a 120 gig IDE drive.

Right now, windows is installed on the IDE.


What should I do:

a) Install windows on the raptor
b) Get more raptors and set up raid-0 (install on that array)
c) Get sata-II drives and install on those (either raid-0 or no raid)
d) Keep as is
e) Other

I feel like the system boots slowly now, which I'd like to improve. All my games are installed on the raptor and I get great performance out of them.

 

[Varun]

Raptor - OS + games
200GB - Storage

Raid 0 does almost nothing for a home user and if one dies you lose everything. If you do anything don't do Raid 0.

 

[alpha88]

Would I suffer much, if I put all my programs and games on the raptor, but left the OS on the IDE? (I was just thinking that since I don't boot that often, the OS might not need the fast drive)

 

[Varun]

If it is a lot of work just leave it the way you have it set up now. A few seconds off boot up time will not make much of a difference. Maybe just move the page file onto the faster hard drive.

 

[saltedeggman]

if you want faster boot, go with RAID0, but them most of the members here will say "You are doubling your chance of getting a drive failure"

 

[corkyg]

The biggest factor for boot speed is to deny startups for background software. The boot cycle always slows to allow those things to load sequentially. The more automation you enjoy, the slower the total boot time.

Agree on RAID 0 (striping.) That spreads your files across 2 drives. If either fails, you lose it all. RAID 1 (mirroring) provides backup.

 

[KoolDrew]

Raptor - OS + games
200GB - Storage