Adding a raptor as a second drive?

[trxjw]

I just finished my first new build in 6 years (see sig) and I won some money at a poker tourney this week so I was considering adding onto it a bit. I'd like to add a 74gb raptor, but it was suggested to me that I might be better off adding it as a secondary/slave drive instead of doing a fresh install of windows on it and running it as my primary. So my question is this..

Do nothing and just add in the raptor (partitioned for games / page file)

or

Backup my existing files and go with the raptor as my main drive and partition it like this:
Raptor C: XP 32bit
Raptor D: Games
WD320 E: Apps and media
WD320 F: Page File

 

[Dan_D]

I don't know why people partition single drives like that. It doesn't help performance in any fashion since you are accessing data on the same physical disk.

I'd use the Raptor as a boot drive and keep my programs and OS there. I'd use another drive to store data, and keep that drive backed up. That's just how I like to do things.

 

[tuskenraider]

I don't know why people partition single drives like that. It doesn't help performance in any fashion since you are accessing data on the same physical disk.

I'd use the Raptor as a boot drive and keep my programs and OS there. I'd use another drive to store data, and keep that drive backed up. That's just how I like to do things.

QFT.

 

[trxjw]

I don't know why people partition single drives like that. It doesn't help performance in any fashion since you are accessing data on the same physical disk.

I'd use the Raptor as a boot drive and keep my programs and OS there. I'd use another drive to store data, and keep that drive backed up. That's just how I like to do things.

It's not for the idea of a performance increase, at least for me it isn't, it's simply for organization.

Thanks for the other advice though.

 

[game14]

i think the more partition u got the more complicated the organisation is .If u have one drive for OS and programs and one for storage .... cant get simpler than that . Sorry but I dont see the point in partitioning drives .

 

[Dan_D]

i think the more partition u got the more complicated the organisation is .If u have one drive for OS and programs and one for storage .... cant get simpler than that . Sorry but I dont see the point in partitioning drives .

I never have either. The only bennefit I've ever seen from it is that you can reformat your OS drive without losing any data stored on a partition, but other than that, I can't think of any reason to do it.

 

[trxjw]

The only bennefit I've ever seen from it is that you can reformat your OS drive without losing any data stored on a partition, but other than that, I can't think of any reason to do it.

That and it makes it easier for me to back drive partitions up when I need to. I'd rather select the drive I want to back up, rather than go through folders and pick out what I want. I don't see what is difficult about it.. but if you find it difficult or pointless then don't do it. I guess reading D:/, E:/ or F:/ sometimes instead of C:/ all the time is harder for organization for some people.


Besides this thread wasn't about partitioning drives.. it was about the drive itself and whether or not it was worth it to buy it. What to use the drive for was my only concern, not what people thought of my organization methods.

 

[nick8571]

Besides this thread wasn't about partitioning drives.. it was about the drive itself and whether or not it was worth it to buy it. What to use the drive for was my only concern, not what people thought of my organization methods.

Well, it is (sort of) relevant to your question, as partitioning the Raptor in the way you suggest will force it to carry out more frequent long seeks which could theoretically result in a performance hit. If performance isn't an issue, there's not much point in considering a Raptor in the first place...

The page file on the WD320 is a good idea (in fact you could have a pagefile on each physical disk and let Windows decide which one to use), but unfortunately your proposed dedicated F partition puts it on the slowest part of the disk.

 

[Mansize_tissue]

The page file on the WD320 is a good idea (in fact you could have a pagefile on each physical disk and let Windows decide which one to use), but unfortunately your proposed dedicated F partition puts it on the slowest part of the disk.

That's what i was about to say. If you're going to create a partition for the page file, then it should be at the beginning of the drive on the outer-most platters. But, i suggest, it's better not to have it in a seperate partition since it can cause head thrashing which could, over time, lower the drive's lifespan.

Thus, the first option you mentioned would be a bad idea. Ideally, the games and page file should be on seperate drives so the work is spread between the two. Therefore, i'd go with option 2- minus the partitions, though. What wrong with just creating a folder in place of the partitions?

 

[teststrips]

as long as your current main (os) partition isn't bigger than 74g - simply use a program like DriveImageXML (free) to copy windows to your raptor. After the image copies over, disconnect your OLD OS drive for the first boot with your Raptor. If you have problems booting the first time, it's probably because windows is "remembering" your raptor as its old drive letter (ie drive D: or E and since it's looking for the OS files at C: it can't boot. To remedy this, boot into dos somehow and do a FDISK /MBR - i think you can do this from the windows recovery console... I don't know I always keep a DOS boot CD around b/c its helped me fix so many problems.

When you hook your old drive back in, make SURE that your bios is set to boot from your raptor and not your old drive....

edit, your biggest performance gains from your raptor are going to be when multiple things are asking for data on your hard drive. My non-raptor machine really bogs down when first booting b/c the programs that start at boot time are all trying to read from the drive... my raptored machine crunches through boot time about 50% faster.. As far as large file transfers, etc.. large capacity drives can almost keep up.... so if you're looking to improve gaming performance with the raptor, you'll likely be disappointed (that is unless your drive is super fragmented + your drive has to bounce all over the place to read files)

Raptors are good drives... most people don't need them though... its rare that I push my raptor hard enough to justify having one.

 

[sdgserv]

I don't know why people partition single drives like that. It doesn't help performance in any fashion since you are accessing data on the same physical disk.

I'd use the Raptor as a boot drive and keep my programs and OS there. I'd use another drive to store data, and keep that drive backed up. That's just how I like to do things.

X2..been doing it that way for long time