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RAID vs second hd question

Fullmetal Chocobo

Moderator<br>Distributed Computing
Moderator
It's well known that your performance will increase (atleast some degree) if you have a scratch disk seperate from your OS, so that you can access your temp files, page file, etc independently of your operating system.

My question is, does this apply to RAID as well? Would having another RAID array for scratch improve your performance if you already have your OS on a RAID 5 array?

Just wondering if anyone has any idea about this, as I'm not quite sure. I don't know if I should create another array for my boot partition, or just add it in to my existing RAID 5 array...
 
That's a good question.

With my setup, I have 4 in a Raid0, and I have two extra disks for storage of more important data. On one of those disks, I have a partition of 6gigs that has nothing but my paging file. On the other disk, along with my download directory, I have "my documents", "Temp" and "TMP" files (set from "environment variables"), and "Temporary Internet Files", all writing there. What this does is keep disk accessing from interfering with each-other. It also keeps my Raid array from fragmenting and keeps that junk in one location.

Maybe I can avoid a long lock-up in a game or a large app that has been running for a long time, by letting the paging file and scratch disk stuff do their thing at the same time that my array is accessing program information. All I know is that it works great and I never seem to lock-up or have to wait for any sort of disk usage to complete.

I guess that my recommendation would be to get as many disks in your Raid5 array as you can, because that will increase overall performance, and maybe after that have another out of the array for a scratch type disk. So, basically, I am assuming that you'll see better gains with a larger array over a smaller array and an extra disk.

I guess it all depends on how overboard you want to go with buying disks. 😀
 
Well, I have 5 250gb disks in RAID 5 right now. I have three more ports on my RAID controller. So I'm adding one more 250 to the array for more storage. That will leave 2 ports.

I was considering adding another 250gb to the RAID 5 for boot, but backing up would have been too much of a pain in the ass. So I'm doing dual 120gb in RAID 0 or RAID 1. But I was wondering what to do about the scratch disks...
 
Hate to do it, but bump for the day crew. Basically, are RAID arrays subject to the same concept of it's best to have your OS and scratch disk on different drives (or arrays anyway)?
 
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