Is it faster to have 2 hard drives?

[tigersty1e]

I'm not talking about RAID.

Is it faster to have the OS on one drive and games and apps on the other drive.

Would the OS, games, and other apps load and run faster than if they were all on the same drive?

 

[ForumMaster]

well yes but also make sure that the second drive (if it's IDE) is on a different channel. if it's SATA, it doesn't matter cause each SATA plug is a separate channel. what you can do, is install the games on one hard drive, and put the pagefile on the other. this increases throughput.

 

[MadMurph]

esp. if your OS and apps are running from a 74gb Raptor as your primary drive and your files are on the second drive. That's as fast (or faster) as a RAID 0 (striped) array.

 

[Pirotech]

I have two drives. One for OS and apps and another one for games and data. It is work faster and my data won't be lost if my system drive damages.

 

[Kakumba]

multiple drives FTW. being able to split I/O across drives is a big benefit. Thats why I have 5 HDDs in my current system. And I just needed a bit of storage.

 

[cytoSiN]

In terms of actual (read: noticeable) performance, how much difference would there be between using a raptor for the OS/apps with a samsung 7200 for storage, as opposed to another 7200 drive for the OS/apps instead of the raptor? Thanks.

 

[Zepper]

It can (should) be if the files and folders are distributed properly between them.

.bh.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: cytoSiN
In terms of actual (read: noticeable) performance, how much difference would there be between using a raptor for the OS/apps with a samsung 7200 for storage, as opposed to another 7200 drive for the OS/apps instead of the raptor? Thanks.

Noticeable if you can appreciate the faster seek time (a few milliseconds) and quicker boot time / paging that result.

 

[Pollock]

Not to hijack this thread, but is there any performance benefit for partitioning a single drive in two, one for the OS and one for data? I've always wondered what the point was.

 

[Zepper]

The OS partition is always being written to - so having your data in a separate partition could give it an extra bit of protection. Best to back it up anyway...

.bh.

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: Pollock
Not to hijack this thread, but is there any performance benefit for partitioning a single drive in two, one for the OS and one for data? I've always wondered what the point was.

I doubt there would be any improvement.

 

[Kakumba]

Actually, depending on what is happening, there are situations where multiple partitions on a single drive can end up slower... Imagine you are writing to partition 1, and to partition 2. if each one is fairly big, then there is even more seek tiem than usual.. That shouldn't happen often though, I hope.

 

[Pollock]

Originally posted by: Zepper
The OS partition is always being written to - so having your data in a separate partition could give it an extra bit of protection. Best to back it up anyway...

.bh.

What's the theory behind this, anyway? If you reinstall the OS on the primary partition, aren't programs on the other partition going to have trouble functioning without the former entries in the registry and stuff?

 

[Starrx05]

Originally posted by: Pollock
Not to hijack this thread, but is there any performance benefit for partitioning a single drive in two, one for the OS and one for data? I've always wondered what the point was.

Having diff. partitions on same drive only help you with management of your files and easier backup. No benefit in read/write performance or failure protection. Best way is to put OS on one drive, data on another drive and either back up this drive regularly or use a mirrored RAID array.

 

[Blain]

Try reading some threads instead of generating more... and more... and more... :roll:
It's amazing what you can find out by actually reading.