3 independent HDD, or 2 in Raid0 + 1 storage?

[euclid]

sorry for the confusing title, i have 2 HDD at the moment a 74g Raptor and a 250g Seagate. right now pagefile is on the seagate as well as all saved media and backup ect. the raptor is OS, games, and programs.

i want to get a another drive, a second raptor, but i am undecided about 36g or another 74g

if i get 36g i will use it only for OS. then use my existing 74g raptor for games and programs only, and the seagate 250g will remain pagefile and media/backup.
so there will be 3 drive heads all seaking different information at any given time = pretty fast :toast:

second option is to get another 74g raptor and run it in Raid0 with my existing 74g raptor. i would combine OS and Games/Programs on the same partition. then still use the seagate for pagefile and backup. this setup will cost me another 60$, and i dont think this will be as fast but i might be wrong.

should i go with the 36g and setup 3 independant drives? thanks

[Qkjhfhaiguihfma]

installing games and programs on another drive/partition doesn't make as much sense on windows, since a reinstall of the os will require many programs to be reinstalled in order for them to run properly.

i think you have the best setup right now for speed. if you need storage i would pick up another 250gb+ drive. if you want more speed i don't think you'll find much in terms of hard drive upgrades.

[mtl_hed]

1) Put your pagefile on the faster drive.

When you load an app/game that uses more memory than physcially available, it goes into the page file. So your loading your game off of the fast raptor into memory, and then any extra needed space is being paged to the slower drive? why?

If any of your games are experiencing slow down or lag due to HDD access, signified by the HDD light blinking during gameplay(not the loading screens) then this will benefit from faster page file access.

2) I would by an additional 74GB raptor. and put them in RAID 0. This is just my 2c.

[mtl_hed]

this setup will cost me another 60$, and i dont think this will be as fast but i might be wrong.


OK so i just read this part, yes the 2 raptors will definatley be the fastest out of the listed configs.

[nn_step]

How about Raid5

[euclid]

pagefile is on the slower drive now only b/c windows install is on the faster drive, windows operates by using the pagefile no matter how much RAM is in the machine, having one head serve this double function is slower. plus considering the pagefile is only occupying 2g in a dedicated partition at the outmost point of a 250g disk, the fundamental operation of the HDD makes this faster than indicated by just the 7k vs 10k rpm speed difference..

most programs and games dont need to be reinstalled after i reformat and reinstall OS, it does make sense for me to have these on seperate partiton for convience, but it increases latency so thats why i figured it would be best to have a seperate Raptor for this purpose.

i'm not sure how pagefile usage works while in-game, if the pagefile is located on the same physical HDD as the game, and the pagefile receives all its data during the intial loadtime wouldn't that increase initial loading times b.c the same head has to send data to pagefile and write to it simultaneously? :confused: if the game does actually have to access the pagefile b.c it runs out of RAM then it doesnt seem like the difference in 10k or 7k would even matter, its going to stutter no matter what.

nn step: im not farmiliar with all the different raid options but ill look inot it now. thanks

[euclid]

i do see now how a raid0 will be faster if i have OS games and programs all located within that same array. but i would still leave the pagefile on the seagate.

so assuming i set up RAID0 with 2 75g raptors, would it be noticably slower to create a seperate partiton for games and programs? that way when i do windows reinstall i only have to reload maybe 10% of the programs, instead i just use .exe shortcuts on the desktop to access location of the game on the other partition.

[mtl_hed]

i'm not sure how pagefile usage works while in-game, if the pagefile is located on the same physical HDD as the game, and the pagefile receives all its data during the intial loadtime wouldn't that increase initial loading times b.c the same head has to send data to pagefile and write to it simultaneously? :confused: if the game does actually have to access the pagefile b.c it runs out of RAM then it doesnt seem like the difference in 10k or 7k would even matter, its going to stutter no matter what.



The game, or any app, only "sees" the block of memory that the OS has allotted to it.

The OS handles all of the page file operations, they are seamless and invisible to the app/game.


Lets say you have 1GB of RAM, and your game uses 1.5GB or RAM when in use and playing.

Windows(or any OS) will automatically determine what part of the 1.5GB to store in the page file, and which to store in physical RAM.

The game doesn't know this.

When the game requests data that is in the page file, windows takes a chunk of memory in physical RAM and transfers it into the page file. Then takes the needed chunk of data and transfers it into the newly opened physical RAM.

Let me describe the process of a game loading on your PC(the way it is setup now):
- open game, start map/level/etc
- game begins to load data from files into memory, Windows chooses to put it all in physical RAM or a portion in the pagefile. In this step you are actually transferring data from one drive to main memory. Then back to the slower drive. This process is slower than if the pagefile where on the same drive, but only slightly.
- the level/map/etc loads and you are now playing the game
- as you move to areas of the game that require data in the pagefile, it will be loaded from the SLOWER drive.

Yes there will not be a HUGE difference from 7k to 10k when paging is perfoming, but this is xtremesystems. Aren't we always looking for the edge? That extra 1fps?

I know I tweak the hell out of my system. I like to squeeze out every ounce of performance that I've paid for.

[mtl_hed]

so assuming i set up RAID0 with 2 75g raptors, would it be noticably slower to create a seperate partiton for games and programs? that way when i do windows reinstall i only have to reload maybe 10% of the programs, instead i just use .exe shortcuts on the desktop to access location of the game on the other partition.

I don;t think there will be a noticable performance difference, just keep in mind that some apps/games will not play well when you do this. THey have registry entries and commonly shared files that are stored on the OS install.

You may notice that after re-installing the OS, then trying to run the old apps/games that some of them will not work.

A better solution for games would be to backup you savegame directories. Then re-install the games when you re-install the OS. Then copy the savegame directories back.

[trakslacker]

most programs and games dont need to be reinstalled after i reformat and reinstall OS



a bit OT, but exactly how do you not have to reinstall games and such after reformatting C:?

[mtl_hed]

nn step: im not farmiliar with all the different raid options but ill look inot it now. thanks

RAID levels explanation. (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/index.html)