Need advice on partitioning strategy

[rizzle]

Hey guys,

So finally im back in the game of building my new rig. it's been a few years and after suffering from a physical hard drive failure, i'm inclined to go for a RAID 1 setup. But before all that, here's my current hard drive layout:

250GB (from my old comp) Current:
--------------------------
[0] Swap Drive (2GB)
[1] XP Pro + Apps (48GB)
[2] Data (200GB)

I've got a new WD Raptor which im' thinking of setting up like this:

74GB SATA WD Raptor (new drive)
--------------------------
[0] XP Pro + Apps (55GB)
[1] Emergency + Dual boot (19GB)

Then repartition the 250GB like this:
250GB IDE 7200RPM (from my old comp) Current:
--------------------------
[0] Swap Drive for XP Pro + Scratch Disk for apps (10 GB)
[1] Data (240GB)

I want to keep the swap file on another disk to improve the performance of windows, especially because the partition would be on the outside of the disk platter.

Here come the questions:
-----------------------------------
* Will it make it make a big performance hit putting the swap file on the IDE drive?
* Is is a good idea to have my scratch disk (for photoshop, encoding, etc.) in the same partition as my swap file?
* If I ever decide to RAID1 my 250GB, is there any hardware that can let me raid just the 240GB data partition with another drive?

Thanks in advance,
Riz

PS Ooh and here's my main setup:
AMD Athlon X2 4400+
A8N32-SLI Deluxe
eVGA 7800GT
WD Raptor 74GB
Maxtor IDE 250GB
Lite-On Lightscribe DVD-RW
2405FPW v2.0

 

[Matthias99]

Generally speaking, any performance gains you're going to get by trying to optimize swapfile placement are pretty small. Just buy more RAM so that you're not using the swapfile to begin with (if you're in a situation where you need more than 4GB of RAM, it *may* help a little, but you're probably screwed either way).

I want to keep the swap file on another disk to improve the performance of windows, especially because the partition would be on the outside of the disk platter.

If you're hitting the swapfile frequently, you don't have enough RAM.

Here come the questions:
-----------------------------------
* Will it make it make a big performance hit putting the swap file on the IDE drive?

It's probably marginally better having it on its own drive, even if that drive is a little slower. However, again I must reiterate that the swapfile is VERY slow regardless.

* Is is a good idea to have my scratch disk (for photoshop, encoding, etc.) in the same partition as my swap file?

I would think that having it on the same physical drive would be the worst possible place if you are also hitting the swapfile simultaneously. Partitioning it one way or another is unlikely to do much.

* If I ever decide to RAID1 my 250GB, is there any hardware that can let me raid just the 240GB data partition with another drive?

Software RAID could. Hardware RAID, maybe, maybe not. RAID0 and RAID1 usually don't need fancy hardware controllers, since the overhead is minimal.

 

[rizzle]

Thanks for the quick reply, Matthias,

I think i've overthought this. You're right that the performance increase i'm getting by playing around with swap file placement is marginal. I'm going to leave it in the same partition as my OS. What i forgot to mention in the original post is that i'll be going to 2x1GB corsair CL2 DDR400 RAM, so hopefully i shouldhn't be hitting the swap file too often.

74GB Raptor
------------------
[0] XP Pro + Swap + Apps [55GB]
[1] Emergency + Dual-boot [19GB]

250GB IDE
------------------
[0] Data [250GB]

That way itll be easier to RAID 1 on the 250GB drive.