High Performance HDD for Windows

[Benmohr]

Has anyone had any 'Real World' experiece of running Windows on its own dedicated hard drive. I was thinking about putting Windows on a fast Raptor drive and set up a large 400Gb hitachi for apps and data etc.

Is there any performance gain to be had that would be worth the effort and additional cost of the Raptor.

Also, I have read that if you are setting up a RAID configuration then performance is improved if you have a seperate controller for each disk. Again anyone had any real experience of this.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

There are plenty of people who have run windows on a dedicated drive, or even a dedicated partition.

The raptor is a very fast drive and would be a good choice if you're looking for an OS drive and costs wasn't much of an issue. If you have a 400gig drive already, the small size of the raptor is probably not an issue

I don't have a raptor myself because I felt that the cost/performance wasn't as good as it would be if I spent it on a different part. Spending $175 towards the cost of a new videocard or processor is probably going to give you better performance overall than spending it on a hard drive.

There are also some other benefits to running an OS drive though. If anything goes wrong with your Windows installation and you need to reformat, it would be nice not to lose any of your stored data.

I think RAID with raptors is getting into the bad idea range. The price/performance of raided raptors vs 1 raptor is even worse. If you're thinking about doing RAID raptors, maybe just try 1 out first and see if you notice a big gain. If you don't notice a big gain on 1 drive, RAID is going to be a waste.

 

[Benmohr]

My idea for the RAID was to get a second Hitachi and have them in a RAID 0 format and just have a single Raptor for Windows. I have a very large collection of Home Movies and edit and burn for some friends as well. I also enjoy playing some games so I really need an all round performance system.

 

[tallman45]

A Windows only partition on the outer edge (5gb) partition of a 300gb 16mb cache drive. That is fast, maybe faster than a Raptor. Plus you have the rest of the drive available for data archive

 

[ribbon13]

The 'seperate controller' theory is only for IDE's where multiple devices were on the same cable. It's irrelevant to SATA.

If you value your large collection of movies, I'd advise against any 16MB ATA drives that are Maxtor.

If you're not hurting for money, the Raptor is an excellent drive, and is the best performing ATA drive. Period. Why RAID0 for a mass storage drive? Video playback does not need that high of a SDR.

 

[Gamingphreek]

RAID will not be worth the money. The Raptor will only be worth the money in large file transfers as well as smal random access. Other than that you will notice absolutely no difference. Just get a nice 7200RPM drive with lots of space, partition it.

-Kevin

 

[Benmohr]

Thanks for all the comments.

With regard to going RAID 0, I like the idea of having two disks being seen as one drive, in this case 'D' drive instead of having a 'D' and 'E' drive. Small point really but something I like. I have a RAID 0 setup on a separate PC and I find it convenient.

Not entirely convinced there is a performance gain with RAID 0. Some folks say definitely ?yes? and other say definitely ?no?.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Benmohr
Thanks for all the comments.

With regard to going RAID 0, I like the idea of having two disks being seen as one drive, in this case 'D' drive instead of having a 'D' and 'E' drive. Small point really but something I like. I have a RAID 0 setup on a separate PC and I find it convenient.

Not entirely convinced there is a performance gain with RAID 0. Some folks say definitely ?yes? and other say definitely ?no?.

You would be much better off living with two separate drive letters than using raid0 for storage. If you want to invest in multiple drives and a real raid controller, and use raid5 then you could have the single drive letter without the increased risk of breakdown that comes with raid0. But that starts to get expensive.

 

[ribbon13]

$275 3Ware Escalade 8506-4LP Kit

$329 3Ware 9500s-4

$233 LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4