Raid And Partition???????

[tutrinh]

Should I??
I had a RAID of 2 WD drive ( total 160G) when installing OS, should I leave it as the whole big drive or parition it into 2 drive?
Is it a good idea?
thanks

[Cjwinnit]

My Array was one full partition and worked fine :)

[pik4chu]

would leave it one partition.. making two defeats the purpose, might as well just leave seperate drives if you want more than one partition. heh

[Sonny]

I like to run multiple partitions on my RAID0 Array. I believe it is a smarter move because you can designate partitions for swapfiles, scratch files(adobe), *.DBX storage, & storage. It may not make the array faster, some even claim lower performance though I have not noticed that, but it will make a system more robust. If you hose your OS you dont loose the other data.

[Cjwinnit]

To clarify: The array I set up had no OS on it.

[pik4chu]

Originally posted by Sonny
I like to run multiple partitions on my RAID0 Array. I believe it is a smarter move because you can designate partitions for swapfiles, scratch files(adobe), *.DBX storage, & storage. It may not make the array faster, some even claim lower performance though I have not noticed that, but it will make a system more robust. If you hose your OS you dont loose the other data.

if your gonna partition for scrap/swap files, would be better using a seperate smaller disk to begin with probably. otherwise your still loading all that junk off the same drives and not gaining anything. partitions wont make it run faster since its all the same physical disks. And if your gonna do storage. what are you doing a RAID 0 for? storage doesnt need speed unless its some enterprise file server (which you wouldnt do RAID 0 on anyways). If all you need is data storage just use tje large drives seperately and get a smaller much faster drive for your system drive and/or swap file(s) stuff. not to mention you can kill your OS on accident and not have to worry at ALL about the data elsewhere. if its on the same disk you could be limited on your options for recovery and whatnot.

[Sonny]

LMAO!!!!! I do it for speed & I only have 2 HDDs. File servers are not the only systems that can use the speed, if you think about it one of the slowest parts of a modern system is its storage so why not get more speed from them? I never said it was faster to have partitions but to make a setup more robust meaning it will last longer. You can kill your OS on another partition & not have to worry about the data on another partition just like on separate drives. If everything is in the same single partition & that's all you got what then, install over then backup then format & reinstall?

It's funny how people think there is only one way to set things up & go the no compromises route without ever thinking of another persons budget. Like with everything there is no one supreme setup for everybody. Your ideas maybe good for you but not for me.

[Quick69GTO]

If I remember right, Windows has one quirk that all of you might want to consider when deciding whether or not to partition large drives or RAID 0 arrays.
When you click to open a file or program, Windows will search the entire partition for the file (and any other related files) and after that first initial reference pass, will come back to the file and open it for you.
This is why XP has the new feature called “Prefetch”. This folder contains permanent (unless you manually empty it) references to programs or files you have opened in the past. XP will look there first before scanning the partition.
This is why smaller drives (or partitions) bring programs up so much faster than larger ones.
Also, I never suggest installing Windows on one drive (or partition) and programs on another. Your system ends up searching across two drives (or partitions).
Is this bull or not? You decide.

[shadowdr]

A few things to add,raid-0 is fast now with the ata 133 drives available,very fast.do you really want an os drive bigger than 20 gigs? I don't so i have my 2x 40's in four partitions,1 20 for the os and nothing but the os,Why,because it defraggs in minutes and has no progies intertwined within it making windows slower.It doesn't need temporary files there either like cd images or music that you will probably delete at some point.programs on a seperate drive do not fragment,it can cause events in the veiwer but not anything that will cause actuall errors.
Need a scratch disc? Put it on a storage volume that you dl files to,it also will not fragment if files are not deleted often.
I am not sure why however raid 0 in my expereince just likes 20 gig partitions,yes they bench faster than 40 gig partitions on my setup and a previous highpoint raid setup.
Got a spare drive?split it into four partitions and ghost the original four,even if its only a 20 gig drive ghost compresses it to fit, so gone are your worries about data security.
This may not be preferable to many but it is the cheapest way to have everything you want as only two drives need to be the same.If your os goes bad from drivers or mistakes,ghost your os partition and your programs partition(so program shortcuts and associations will not be lost or invalid)back and your at your last backup point in five minutes.

[Zatoichi]

hey shadowdr,

I think I want a set-up like that. I will be using the comp for video editing so I got 2 80gig serial drives and want raid-0. But I worry if the speed will decrease if I partition the drives. I know I need the scratch disk for the raw video data, be able to defrag often, since I will be deleting a lot. I will also be using a ghost program in case of corruption. What is a decent ghost program and how will the peformance be compared to a drive unpartitioned?

[Pla]

To partition or not - it doesn't change the raid speed.

To partition is better IMO.

I have 1 partition only for the OS and system progs.
They don't change so they don't fragment the partition a lot.
Also since they don't write to the system partition there is almsot no chance of creating file-system errors on the system partition. What that means - my system is always healthy to boot.

On another parition I have all my games and avi files on a third partition.
On a forth is the swap file.

What that means - when I game crashes (it happens you know) in most case some of the files it was writing to are not properly linked on the disk, not closed,
and the worst - overcrossed with some other random files. The good thing is - on that partition there are no system files so the "other files" will not be OS files so my system will boot next time although I may have to reinstall some game... but not the OS.

So that's why to use partitions is better.

Here is my setup
partition 1: 1.1 GB with 1GB swap/ page file.
partition 2: 15 GB - OS
partition 3: 30 GB - games, progs and other
partition 4: 180 GB - avi files, cd images, and all create/delete files.


My system works 24/7 without reboot in a 2-3 months. If I reboot it would be for a new fan or something.

Also I haven't reinstalled the OS for over 2 years now.
Even when I moved from a single drive to raid I ghosted it.

So this speaks for itself - if you want to reinstall your OS every 3-6 months (as some PC mags suggest) then use 1 big partition.

If you don't - then spare your OS of the mistakes of crashing games and progs.
Also make your system not crash in the first place.

[Zatoichi]

so I guess its important to put the swap and os in the front of the drive? Am I correct in saying that the first partition you make will be faster than the last partition created?

[Pla]

Originally posted by Zatoichi
so I guess its important to put the swap and os in the front of the drive? Am I correct in saying that the first partition you make will be faster than the last partition created?

Yes.
The begining of the disk space goes to the outer cylinders of the disk which are longer (more data) so their transfers are faster.
(More data is read on a sinlge rotaion.)
The difference may be as 50MB/s in the begining of the disk compared to 35 MB/s at the end of the disk (the inner part).

That's why I put my swap file at the begining. - it is used most often. Then the system... and so on.

It is not very important but it is an optimization.

[Zatoichi]

i saw that breakdown for the file partition:

Here is my setup
partition 1: 1.1 GB with 1GB swap/ page file.
partition 2: 15 GB - OS
partition 3: 30 GB - games, progs and other
partition 4: 180 GB - avi files, cd images, and all create/delete files.


are they all ntfs, or some fat32 or even fat 16? which is better for speed. also i read that if you plan on doing video editing, which i plan to use this comp for, what should the cluster size be. is 16 decent for A/V editing?

also i am looking more for cutting down the encoding time really. really don't care for the opening apps faster or playing games faster. just cut that damn encode time to small as possible.

thanks

[Pla]

on the swap file partition the FS is fat32 with 16kb cluster as no files are created there. Also the swap file size is fixed.
Fat32 is faster then ntfs if it is not fragmented.

all the other partitions are ntfs - they change (added/deleted/resized files) which fragments them a lot and ntfs fragments slower then fat. Also it is more reliable.

Now, for the encoding time - doesn't it depend like 90% on the CPU/memory?

Do you know when you encode if the cpu is at 100% all the time?
Or is your hdd light on all the time?

Don't expect much gain from playing with the cluster size. I use 4kb for all ntfs partitions but 16kb seems reasonable for the video files partition.

Just make sure that your hdd reads and writes at expected speeds. I had problems with mine after updating the bios - the write speeds became abnormaly slow (6MB/s compared to 69MB/s) which I fixed later.

[Zatoichi]

i got swap file partition over 100 mb/sec and the os partition around 94 mb/sec. yeah the encoding seems to be dependent on the chip. i got 1 gig ram 3500(512x2) but a slow 2500+@2.2ghz. i need to play with trying to oc that baby. but i did see significate gains from my old system. before burning a 40 min clip took me around 2 hrs and now it takes 42 min. i see that depending on the movie time length, its the same time to encode plus 2 min. so 30 min movie clip will take me 32 min. plus these maxtor diamond 9 sata drives are freaking loud. but when i encode, hardly any sound. its the chip that is the bottleneck. chip is 100% and hd having a smoke while encoding.

so i will leave the pagefile fat32 and convert the rest to ntfs.

have you read this paper? it does the reverse. gaining speed from inside the drive to the outside of the drive.
http://www.owainlloyd.com/qosraid/

[Pla]

"slow 2500+@2.2ghz" - this is not slow! please!
That's a very good setup you got!

Also don't convert the partitions to ntfs just to make them faster!
They will remain the same. NTFS is more reliable and has more features. And it supports large volumes with normal cluster size.

If you have the time you can convert and check the performance and then decide which FS to use.

But keep in mind that converting a file system is not 100% safe.
Also to improve the performance of ntfs you can turn off indexing on the partition you use for encoding.

[Zatoichi]

ah turn it off good idea. well have the page file and partition for the programs and this left over space of 13 gig on fat32. my os, and avi scratch disk is on ntfs. i think i will leave as is. but yeah i'm in testing phase so i will try both versions of file systems and see which is better for me. thanks for all the help.