tale of 2 raptors - to raid or not to raid

Got my hands on a couple of raptors... WD360GD-00FNA0 (older versions but still fun)

Do any of you have two of these set up in a RAID 0 config? Wondering if you've experience them as independent drives and as raided drives and what your thoughts are.

I'm thinking I'm going to set these up RAID 0. Run my operating system (XP) and selected apps like games, or maybe some programs I use alot on the combined 72 gigs

the alternative is to NOT raid and set up windowsXP on one drive and fast apps on the other

What's your opinion? Raid or Not Raid

note: I have other drives for storage and additional apps

P5N32-E-SLI, e4300, ddr2 800 2x1gig tracers, 8800gts-320, antec 850w psu, antec 900 case
Win XP pro

You're better off running separate drives, for a couple of major reasons:
1) 50% less data lost in the case of a single hard drive crash.
2) Install the OS and hard drive intensive apps and games on one and put the swap and low intensity stuff on the other. This will help a lot in high I/O situations.

RAID-0 has really only a single advantage, and that's in highly linear I/O such as video editing or transferring massive files.

Definitely leaning towards two separate drives now as suggested above.

DRIVE 1: Windows XP and Games

DRIVE 2: Swap File and additional apps

I've read about moving swap file before.
Does this sound like a smart way to set up?
Should the swap file be on a partition on Drive 2 or not?

Right, you'd want to set your swap file on the drive where Windows isn't installed. That way when you have various things being loaded and moved around and requiring paging (swap file) the hard drives won't have to move all over the drive paging data, the other drive will just kick in.

It's not all that significant in a lot of cases, but in high I/O situations it can be a very noticeable improvement.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davelakecity

Definitely leaning towards two separate drives now as suggested above.

DRIVE 1: Windows XP and Games

DRIVE 2: Swap File and additional apps

I've read about moving swap file before.
Does this sound like a smart way to set up?
Should the swap file be on a partition on Drive 2 or not?

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Given the above configuration
where should I put Battle Field 2.... I know I'm a big geek,but I want the levels to load as fast as possible.... Drive 1 or Drive 2?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davelakecity

Given the above configuration
where should I put Battle Field 2.... I know I'm a big geek,but I want the levels to load as fast as possible.... Drive 1 or Drive 2?

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Drive 1 probably. The more RAM you have the less of an impact you'll see from swapfile placement, but just assume that anything with massive files that load to and from memory (large games, photoshop, video editing) will benefit from having the swapfile on a separate disk.

Smaller games and apps and other things with a small memory footprint won't benefit as much, but if you have a lot of things open you should definitely see a difference.

Mr. Digital...
Here's an idea

What if I were to partition off a small section of my new 200gig wd sata3g drive in the first sectors... Put the swap file in there?

raptor = 1 Win XP
raptor = 2 game
wd2000 = swap file

yeah... I know, this is getting nit picky, but just for sake of discussion
I've heard that if you make a partition near the "beginning" of the disk it makes for a fast swap file...

You want your swapfile on your fastest disk so that less time is required getting to and from the data.

Position on the drive isn't as important as spindle speed (7200 vs 10000rpm) and access time (which is greatly reduced with the higher spindle speed)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrDigital

You want your swapfile on your fastest disk so that less time is required getting to and from the data.

Position on the drive isn't as important as spindle speed (7200 vs 10000rpm) and access time (which is greatly reduced with the higher spindle speed)

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gotcha... thanks for your advice

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davelakecity

I've heard that if you make a partition near the "beginning" of the disk it makes for a fast swap file...

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Does time go by in nanoseconds for you? I don't think it's possible to notice that. :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PriMaTe

Does time go by in nanoseconds for you? I don't think it's possible to notice that. :p

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true enough.... I have too much time on my hands lately so I'm all into trying to optimize this system

you want it to be perfect i know what you mean