Lots of hard drives - what do i put where?

[Bananadude]

I have 3 hard drives - a fairly old 20GB Maxtor, a fairly new 40GB WD, and a brand new 80GB WD (Special Edition 8MB Cache). I've yet to set up everything, and the new WD is still sitting in the box, but i plan to reformat all my drives and start fresh with everything. I'm just wondering best way to go about it. I would like to optimum speed really, but not sure where the speed of my new drive will really show - running apps, accessing files or what?

The old 20GB Maxtor i think i will just keep for junky stuff - movies, big files etc. as it crashed on me a year ago, losing everything, so i don't want to put anything valuable on there.

Not sure whether to put apps on a partition on the 80GB (say a 15-20GB one), and have general files on the other partition, and use the other 40GB drive for general files also, or perhaps dedicate the older 40GB drive solely to apps, and use the 80GB for files and such (although perhaps still partitioned).

Anyway, all thoughts and comments much appreciated...

 

[BlueWeasel]

Have you considered your IDE layout? How many DVD/CDroms/CD-RWs will you have? I'd need to know this to make recomendations on the master/slave configuration for optimal speed.

If it was me, I would probably partition the 80gb into 2 40gb partitions and leave the other two drives as they are.

Example:

WD80 40gb Partition 1 - C:\
WD80 40gb Partition 2 - D:\
WD40 - E:\
Maxtor20 - F:\

I would certainly use the new WD80 with the 8mb cache as my main drive to store the OS and applications.

 

[Bananadude]

Ah, yes, i forgot about the layout. I have a 1 DVD drive and 1 CDRW drive. Using an Asus P4S8X mbd if that makes any difference.

 

[BlueWeasel]

OK, so I assume then that are going to use the onboard Promise SATA controller.

I would put the WD80 as master on the SATA and the WD40 as the slave. I would probably put the Maxtor20 as the Master on the ATA/133 primary and your DVD as the slave on this controller. Put the remaining CDRW on the secondary ATA/133 as master.

Putting the CDRW on a channel by itself allows no problems with DVD to CDRW "on the fly" copying.

Of course, you have alot of leeway with how you could set it up.

 

[Bananadude]

Well i actually have not got the mbd yet - still waiting on it to be delivered - so i'm not familiar with the Promise SATA controller. I assume this is a feature on the mbd? No doubt i will become aware of it once i've read the manual. Is what you suggest an easy thing to set up? It sounds fairly straightforward.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Yeah, it easy if you are familar with master/slave setup, typical hard drive setup, etc.

I check the specs on that particular MB at the Asus webpage. It has the serial ATA (SATA) controller, which is the next interface for hard drive and storage devices. However, the SATA controller that can function as a single ATA/133 controller as well. Therefore, you can have a total of 6 IDE devices installed using the SATA and the 2 ATA onboard controllers.

 

[chocoruacal]

I would do:

40 gig--10 part system, 30 part programs
and
80 gig--data, unpartitioned. I know it may seem "tidier" to make a zillion partitions, but it takes longer to send data between partitions, than between different folders on one partition.

Since you have SATA, keep the drives on seperate channels.

Ditch the 20 gig, or keep it around in case you get a second box.

 

[Bananadude]

Would be able to do the same with the SATA on the Asus P4PE, or does this board not have this feature? Reason i ask is i'm thinking of swapping it as i've heard of many problems people have had with the P4S8X.