Need opinion on SCSI hard drive setup options...

[SloppyB]

OK...here is the deal:

I have an Adaptec 29160 SCIS controller, 2 Quantum Atlas V 9.1 SCSI hard drives and one Western Digital 18.1 hard drive. The Quantum drives transfer at 160 and the WD at 80. I work allot with large graphic files and want to optimize my system for the best hard drive performance.

Option One: Use one Atlas as the system drive, one Atlas partitioned for data and swap file and then the WD for data storage.

Option Two: Use the WD as the system drive and then stripe the two Atlas drives for data storage and the swap file. I like this option better as I would only have two drives instead of four.

So the basic question is...is it better to have the operating system on the fastest drive...or the data and swap file on the fastest drive? My guess would be option one...

Any advice would be great...Thanks

/SLOPPY

 

[jimmygates]

Use the Atlas as the system drive and the WD for the storage drive.




-Jimbo

 

[SloppyB]

How about...does any one know how to stripe two drive in Windows 2000 when one is the operating system drive?

 

[Jhereg]

While I think using software RAID is a bit unnerving, it is cheaper than hardware.

Boot drives do not need to be the fastest; so put the os on the slow drive and stripe the others for data and Swap file


When you create a stipe set you loose all previous data so there is no way that you can put have an OS on one drive and expect it to exist after creating the stripe

Jhereg

 

[SloppyB]

OK...so one vote for OS on the fastest drive and one for data on the fastest drive.

I agree, however, that software RAID is not as good as hardware RAID...but I'm lucky my wife hasn't killed me yet. I can just see it..."Honey, can I buy a $500 RAID card?" It just gives me chills thinking about it.

Anyway, OS at 80 and data at striped 160....or OS at 160, temp data and swap at 160 and data at 80? One vote for each....you can see why I've asked this question.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

The Atlas drives are great, but please don't RAID them. A lot of people seem to be setting up RAID systems for the coolness factor, but the fact is that you're comprimising reliability and performance may decrease (CPU utilization and access times increase).

I suggest that you use Win2k or Linux, I'm guessing you'd opt for Win2k. If you use Win2k, make these drives NTFS formatted. NTFS will allow you to have a partition on one hard drive appear as a folder on the other, so you don't have to mess around with 4 partitions if you don't want to. Linux allows you to do something similar.

I would set it up like this:
Drive 0: Atlas V
Include on Drive 0:
Operating system + half of swapfile
Your favorite apps.

Drive 1: Atlas V
Include on Drive 1:
Other half of swapfile (win2k will manage these halves nicely...sort of like RAID)
Data

Drive 2: WD
Include on Drive 2:
Apps with occasional use
Data archives (old stuff you created a while ago, don't have any immediate use for, but don't want to get rid of)

 

[SloppyB]

Excellent points...thanks. I had forgotten that you could have drives show up as folders.

While RAID is cool, and I will admit that I haven't setup a striping software RAID system in Win2K, do you really think that the processor (PIII800 133 bus) would become the bottleneck?

Also, while it is a given that I will format the drives with NTFS...what about converting them to dynamic discs? Do you know of any advantages or disadvantages?

 

[*kjm]

Sir Fredrick


"NTFS will allow you to have a partition on one hard drive appear as a folder on the other"

I have seen you post this befor and I would like to try it. Could you or anyone tell me how to or point me to the help file telling me how to do this? Thanks!

 

[SloppyB]

I believe that the disc needs to be a dynamic disc and when you create the volume it gives you the option to chose the drive letter or path or neither. However, I have not positive it the disc is required to be dynamic.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

click on start | run
type in diskmgmt.msc

This is the disk manager, you can do everything you need to do from here.

To upgrade a disk to a dynamic disk (not sure if this is necessary), right click on the disk (in the bottom panel), choose upgrade to dynamic disk

To make one partition a folder on another drive, right click on the partition in the upper panel, choose change drive letter or path.

that's about it.

 

[*kjm]

Thanks