Setting up two harddrives

[sneveTsS]

I multi-task a ton between gaming and multimedia use and I've recently purchased a new rig.

My setup is as follows:

e6600
8800GTS
2GB G-Skill RAM
ECGA nForce 680i SLI MOBO
Seagate barracuda 7200RPM 500GB
72GB WD Raptor

Now, I want to run all of my games off of one drive and everything else off of the other. I'm not really interested in running RAID (unless you would advise I do), however I would like the optimal setup for booting and loading my games.

So, my question is would you advise I boot off of my Seagate with all of my multimedia stuff on it, or boot from my raptor with my games on it? I'm new to the whole two harddrive setup, so I'm not sure the best route to take as far as performance goes -- I'm up for anything though.

Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[tuskenraider]

I multi-task a ton between gaming and multimedia use and I've recently purchased a new rig.

My setup is as follows:

e6600
8800GTS
2GB G-Skill RAM
ECGA nForce 680i SLI MOBO
Seagate barracuda 7200RPM 500GB
72GB WD Raptor

Now, I want to run all of my games off of one drive and everything else off of the other. I'm not really interested in running RAID (unless you would advise I do), however I would like the optimal setup for booting and loading my games.

So, my question is would you advise I boot off of my Seagate with all of my multimedia stuff on it, or boot from my raptor with my games on it? I'm new to the whole two harddrive setup, so I'm not sure the best route to take as far as performance goes -- I'm up for anything though.

Thanks for the help in advance.

Throw your OS and programs/games on the Raptor, put the pagefile and data files on the Barracuda. Putting some programs on the Barracuda isn't gonna help with speed.

 

[sneveTsS]

Throw your OS and programs/games on the Raptor, put the pagefile and data files on the Barracuda. Putting some programs on the Barracuda isn't gonna help with speed.

What do you mean by pagefile and data files? Are you saying to put everything on the Raptor and put my saved documents(?) on the Barracuda?

 

[tuskenraider]

What do you mean by pagefile and data files? Are you saying to put everything on the Raptor and put my saved documents(?) on the Barracuda?

Yep, if you actually have more data than the Raptor's capacity. Even if you had two identical drives, splitting the OS and programs to separate drives didn't produce any tangible performance benefits when I tested such a setup so I don't recommend it. The pagefile is part of Windows "virtual memory" that pages data to the hard drive if your RAM is being fully used. Moving it from the OS drive may help at those times OS and the pagefile would be attempted to be accessed at the same time. Being on separate drives they actaully could. You have 2GB of RAM so while it isn't a big concern, it doesn't hurt to optimize it anyway. This explains more.

Edit: Oh, and welcome to the forum!

 

[sneveTsS]

Thanks a lot for the help. I've been reading these forums quite a bit lately catching up on the overclocking scene and I have really learned a lot. It's really nice to find a community where you don't get flamed for asking questions, lol.

Ok, so I'm reading your link and I'm slightly confused. I'm looking at this picture as I believe this is how I change where the pagefile is stored (if needed) http://www.petri.co.il/images/pagefilexp2.jpg. If my Drives are C(Seagate) and D(Raptor), I would want to select the C drive and set ~2200mb's of space for the pagefile, or am I missing something?

 

[emceepecks]

Yep, OS/Apps/Games on the raptor

music/videos/iso's/big files on your 'cuda

Like tuskenraider said, having your pagefile on a non-os drive always helps a little.

 

[tuskenraider]

Thanks a lot for the help. I've been reading these forums quite a bit lately catching up on the overclocking scene and I have really learned a lot. It's really nice to find a community where you don't get flamed for asking questions, lol.

It's a good question, no reason for flaming. Just to add further, even if you're multi-tasking, most of the programs needed files will be loaded into RAM and will not need simultaneous hard drive access. Of course some games load maps as you go, but unless you're trying to launch all the apps at once, and those programs happen to be split equally on each drive........no benefit really.

 

[tuskenraider]

Ok, so I'm reading your link and I'm slightly confused. I'm looking at this picture as I believe this is how I change where the pagefile is stored (if needed) http://www.petri.co.il/images/pagefilexp2.jpg. If my Drives are C(Seagate) and D(Raptor), I would want to select the C drive and set ~2200mb's of space for the pagefile, or am I missing something?

Just caught your edit..........If you were to keep your setup this way, I'd remove the pagefile from C: by selecting it and then selecting the No Pagefile button and you'll get a warning about needing to reboot once you click "Set" which you can ignore for the moment. Then select the D: drive, Custom, and set the Initial and Max both to 2000MB, which is plenty. "Set", then reboot. Pagefile is now separate from your OS, and consider it "optimized". Do the same if you switch the drives around like I recommended(Raptor as C:, and Barracuda as D).

 

[sneveTsS]

Awesome, thanks a bunch. I will surely do this when I get my new rig in and set it all up

Also, this is really off-topic, but I've been looking around the forums and haven't really seen a "guide for overclocking" or a "how-to" article anywhere. Would you happen to know where one is at on these forums or know a link to one? I've been looking all over for 'tips and tricks' and haven't had any luck thus far.

Haha, and to add to my list of questions...

If I were to install XP on one HD and Vista on another (DX10 Games), would this work? Would I be able to dual-boot and switch between/transfer files fairly freely? I hate upgrading OS before they release at least a SP2 and DX10 games may be coming out before Microsoft fixes most of the known bugs with Vista. So if I wanted to run Vista and XP, could I and if so, how would I go about doing that?

 

[tuskenraider]

Awesome, thanks a bunch. I will surely do this when I get my new rig in and set it all up

Also, this is really off-topic, but I've been looking around the forums and haven't really seen a "guide for overclocking" or a "how-to" article anywhere. Would you happen to know where one is at on these forums or know a link to one? I've been looking all over for 'tips and tricks' and haven't had any luck thus far.

A quick seach didn't find anything current for me either. I always think it's best to go into the specific motherboard and maybe CPU forum that you own and look up stuff in there that is more relevant to your rig. But you'd think it'd be easy to find stuff based on the name of this place.

If I were to install XP on one HD and Vista on another (DX10 Games), would this work? Would I be able to dual-boot and switch between/transfer files fairly freely? I hate upgrading OS before they release at least a SP2 and DX10 games may be coming out before Microsoft fixes most of the known bugs with Vista. So if I wanted to run Vista and XP, could I and if so, how would I go about doing that?

For dual boot, you could make two partitions on one drive to have each OS or install one each on separate drives. If using a partitioned drive, you'd want to install XP first since it is older and then Vista, which would then be "aware" the other exists. This way you'd have a Windows menu to select either OS. I'm not positive if you did Vista first, that XP would detect Vista and give a you dual boot menu, though I believe you could create one. Either way, each partition or drive could be "seen" by the other in order to get or save files to.

 

[sneveTsS]

Ok, cool deal. Thanks a bunch for all the help. I really appreciate it.