SATA + IDE OS SET uP? which is better?

[gorilly]

ok i have an ide drive and a sata drive (both 7200).

is it better to have my OS on my SATA drive and my files on my ide or is it better to have my os on ide and files on SATA?

also which one do i save my programs too? i want best performance!

thanks

[alphasl]

I think the perfomance is about the same no matter how you do it. I put XP on a SATA with the programs. The games go on a second SATA drive. Video and other files go on the IDE's.

[grimm003]

I have the same setup basically, 1 ide and 1 sata. I installed my OS on my sata at first, thinking it's faster so I'd get the best gain from installing it there. But there is practically no gain, the speeds between the 2 are basically the same. So from now on I keep my OS installed on my IDE because I have had a few problems with my SATA drive at times, and its a big pain if your windows is on the drive not working. I keep all of my programs and games on my SATA though. If your looking for a big gain, get yourself another SATA and hook it up RAID 0 style!

[Mr.Guvernment]

no major difference, the only perforamnce gain you would see is if you transfer large files (100mb +) alot - your SATA drive would like out perform your IDE because of it's increased bandiwdth of 150mbps range.

[gorilly]

I have the same setup basically, 1 ide and 1 sata. I installed my OS on my sata at first, thinking it's faster so I'd get the best gain from installing it there. But there is practically no gain, the speeds between the 2 are basically the same. So from now on I keep my OS installed on my IDE because I have had a few problems with my SATA drive at times, and its a big pain if your windows is on the drive not working. I keep all of my programs and games on my SATA though. If your looking for a big gain, get yourself another SATA and hook it up RAID 0 style!


What sort of problems did you get? by the sounds of it i am going to install windows and files on my ide and all my programs and games on my SATA

[FireFox]

Put your OS on your IDE. That way you dont have to mess arround with installing SATA drivers durring the install part of XP. What grimm003 is talking about is that if your OS doesnt let you boot for some odd reason, you simply cant boot from the XP CD and use recovery console. You would have to boot from the CD, install the SATA drivers, then get to the recovery console.

The ONLY reason for putting your OS on the SATA is if it is a newer or bigger drive than the IDE. Newer (and most of the time bigger) drives have a tendancy to be faster at accessing data.

BTW Mr.Guvernment:

"no major difference, the only perforamnce gain you would see is if you transfer large files (100mb +) alot - your SATA drive would like out perform your IDE because of it's increased bandiwdth of 150mbps range."

That is not entirely correct; that 150MBps is simply a huge highway that can handle that much data across it at one time but it is up to the drive attached to the cable that will determine how much data will acctually make it across. Most IDE/SATA drives can only pump out 50MB/s. (Raptors can do ~60-70MB/s; 15K SCSI can do ~75MB/s) ATA100 IDE can handle 100MB/s and ATA133 can handle 133MB/s. SO unless the physical characteristics between the actuall drives themselves are different (not the interface) there will be no tangable difference in speed simply going SATA vs IDE.

Granted and IDE channel can handle 2 devices per cable but even then only one IDE device can be actively using the channel at any one time (it can switch backand forth between devices very quickly).

Foxy