2 hardrives better than one?

[Maccer101]

Typically, the big steps that people seem to advise is to keep your virtual memory on a separate drive to your programs, so that accessing the swap file does not interfere with regular read/write operations.

Thanks for the advice on that, found a link

MyTechGuide.com » Archive » How to optimize virtual memory (swap file) in Windows


HSK - I like the point of the OS on a separate partition and taking a snapshot, its always the same you work out another way to do things once its too late to change.


I'm not in a position where I want reinstall the whole caboodle yet, will probably just get another 500gb drive and transfer the data onto that one. At least with having 2 500gb drives I can do an extra backup of important data on the other one.

[Thorsson]

That advice is out of date - it was a pretty good rule in the days of Win9x. But as one of the comments says it's not a good guide these days.

[Bugbait]

I'd personally use the fastest drive for the OS, ie. Small WD Raptor is nice. Then stick everything else on the remaining drives. If the pocket allows, get enough RAM so you can turn off the swap file, I haven't used one in years.

EDIT: Simple answer for the OP, yes, two or more HDD's are better than one.

[Link97]

Your 500GB drive is much faster than the 80GB one so you'd be better off using it for everything.

My 80gig is a shocking 0.4ms slower than my 500gig... is that really a noticeable difference? Really?

[Timo]

My 80gig is a shocking 0.4ms slower than my 500gig... is that really a noticeable difference? Really?

It's not quite as simple as that.

Imagine a disc (platter) spinning at a given speed, like old vinyl records. At the edge of the disc, the circumference is greater, meaning more data can be stored, written and read within one single revolution. However, the further in to the centre of the disc the circumference decreases, so less data can be held and read/written during a full revolution. In actual fact, at the middle of the disc, you can store only half of the data that you can store on the outer edge. Or, to put it another way, the effective speed that data can be read/written at the inner-most of the disc is halved that of data on the outer edge.

So let's take an 80GB hard-disk. When you have added, say, 79GB of data, so that it's nearly full, the hard-drive performance for the data lying at the inner-most of the disc is halved, as the circumference is at its smallest.

Now let's take a 500GB hard-disk. If you added 79GB of data to it, as above, the disc would be only about a sixth full, but the data is nowhere near the inner-most of the disc yet, therefore performance is not compromised as much as it would be on a 80GB drive. Only when you have added 499GB of data to it would the performance for the data lying at the innermost part of the disc would be halved.

In other words, it would take 500GB of data on a 500GB disk for performance of the data lying at the inner most of the disc to be halved. But it would take only 80GB on an 80GB disk for data lying at the inner-most part of the disc for the performance to be halved. So if you had just 80GB on a 500GB disk, the performance of data lying at the inner-most part wouldn't be at all as bad as 80GB being on an 80GB disk. It would be significantly faster.

[Link97]

It's not quite as simple as that.

Imagine a disc (platter) spinning at a given speed, like old vinyl records. At the edge of the disc, the circumference is greater, meaning more data can be stored, written and read within one single revolution. However, the further in to the centre of the disc the circumference decreases, so less data can be held and read/written during a full revolution. In actual fact, at the middle of the disc, you can store only half of the data that you can store on the outer edge. Or, to put it another way, the effective speed that data can be read/written at the inner-most of the disc is halved that of data on the outer edge.

So let's take an 80GB hard-disk. When you have added, say, 79GB of data, so that it's nearly full, the hard-drive performance for the data lying at the inner-most of the disc is halved, as the circumference is at its smallest.

Now let's take a 500GB hard-disk. If you added 79GB of data to it, as above, the disc would be only about a sixth full, but the data is nowhere near the inner-most of the disc yet, therefore performance is not compromised as much as it would be on a 80GB drive. Only when you have added 499GB of data to it would the performance for the data lying at the innermost part of the disc would be halved.

In other words, it would take 500GB of data on a 500GB disk for performance of the data lying at the inner most of the disc to be halved. But it would take only 80GB on an 80GB disk for data lying at the inner-most part of the disc for the performance to be halved. So if you had just 80GB on a 500GB disk, the performance of data lying at the inner-most part wouldn't be at all as bad as 80GB being on an 80GB disk. It would be significantly faster.

I understand what you're saying, but if the overall diameter of each platter is the same and the OS is stored on the outer-most part, would the 5gig or however big XP is really make a difference?

[acro666]

I have four HDs, but I would rather not go into that again, cos I don't want Thorrson leaping about on Trigger again.

The other day I used HDClone to clone my Operating System to yet another HD which I keep separate and away from my computer, as I have recently had a foul-up with WniXP when it refused to start.

Using the clone system was a doddle, even for me. I require lots of HDs as I dabble in movie making which eats up HD space like nothing you have seen before. So yes two HDs are very useful indeed.

regards

acri666

[Thorsson]

If you need more than one disk for space reasons then that's beside the point.

Do 2HDDs have some performance benefit? Yes, but with the caveat that an older, slower disk could actually slow things down (and smaller disks are usually slower than larger for various reasons). Is there a cost to this? Yes, because 2x250Gb disks will cost more than 1x500Gb. The performance benefit increases a bit if you use a Raptor, but the cost increases more.

So the answer really is it depends on your needs, your use, and how you view the saving of a few seconds against the saving of a few more pounds. For myself, although money is not really an issue, the speed difference is not noticeable, and I prefer to spend my money elsewhere.

[Timo]

I understand what you're saying, but if the overall diameter of each platter is the same and the OS is stored on the outer-most part, would the 5gig or however big XP is really make a difference?

Sorry, hadn't read that far up so didn't see what you were planning. It was a general point to bear in mind that there is a speed difference in different positioning of data placed on different sized HDs. It's up to you how you could use that to your advantage, to optimise your system to your own preference via creating partitions at different places on the disks.

But it really depends on what you (or anyone) is going to be using their systems for. For example in my line of work I dabble with making music, and thus when streaming hundreds of of audio files all at once in realtime while mixing a song it's better to have that data on the outside of the disk to avoid critical dropouts, and to store less critical stuff towards the inner. People who do video editing would equally stand to gain from having their video material placed at the front of the drives, for quick streaming while working/recording. But big hard-drives eliminate this to an extent, as you don't need to worry about the compromise in speed as early, because you wont fill up the drive as quickly. However, everyone else's preferences will be different, so will require a different partition/disk setup for optimal use. - One to your own liking or individual way of working.

For general stuff, I'd be tempted to take the 80GB HD and split it into two or three partitions. One or two primary partitions for dual-boot operating systems (if that's your thing) at the front half of the 80GB disk which should load quickly, with a third logical partition placed in the second half (rear) of the disk for backups (for things like disk images, or backups of critical files on your separate data disk for security) where any such compromised speed is not much of an issue there). And then place your big programs on a logical partition at the front of your 500GB disk, with further separate logical partitions for music, videos etc., and one more logical partition at the back for storing critical backups of your OS drive.

However, as mentioned, if you're going to be using several disks/partitions for OSs and programs, just make sure to clone the OS drive(s) (using Norton Ghost or similar) so that the registry knows where all your other programs are pointing to on different partitions or physical disks, in case your OS goes down or if you fancy cleaning up the OS back to peak condition.

[GoNz0]

I'd personally use the fastest drive for the OS, ie. Small WD Raptor is nice. Then stick everything else on the remaining drives. If the pocket allows, get enough RAM so you can turn off the swap file, I haven't used one in years.

EDIT: Simple answer for the OP, yes, two or more HDD's are better than one.

i thought windows created a small page file even when its disabled. i think it has to to boot tbh, i may stand corrected on this for vista but in XP it makes a 100mb file when its disabled, if you unhide system files and operating system files it should show itself hiding in c drive.

you should also still have pf usage in task manager?

[cotswoldcs]

Yes two drive are better than one.

Hang on, that's a little bit of a generalisation. An 80Gb drive for the OS and 500Gb drive for the Data would be a lot slower than a single 500Gb drive because of the performance difference between the faster 500Gb drive and the slower 80Gb drive. Generally speaking, the larger the capacity the faster the performance (with notable exceptions like the WD Raptor/VelociRaptor.

Two hard drives would be faster than one if they were comparable but don't be tempted to use an old 80Gb drive (for example) thinking that it will improve performance. Hard drive technology moves so quickly and newer drives are considerably faster than those of several years ago.

[Maccer101]

My Original question revolved around having 2 identical 500gb SATAII drives.

The OS and Program 500gb drive would have a partition to backup some data files (family photos, videos)

The second 500gb would be for all data files

[Thorsson]

The answer is that you will get a small performance improvement some of the time. How small is small? In a completely unscientific test I loaded a 2Gb image from my completely unoptimised pictures folder on the same HDD as everything else. It took less than 1 second. Frankly getting it to be smaller still seems too trifling to worry about.

[sjbuck]

Yeah I do this, single disk to boot the OS, 3 disks in RAID0 for D:, 2 Disks in raid0 for E: (ultra fast disk to disk copies/unrar's/video editing) and backup the lot to a nas box with 1/2TB on it over gigabit, works a treat.

[Bugbait]

i thought windows created a small page file even when its disabled. i think it has to to boot tbh, i may stand corrected on this for vista but in XP it makes a 100mb file when its disabled, if you unhide system files and operating system files it should show itself hiding in c drive.

you should also still have pf usage in task manager?

Not sure if it still applies in Vista (I think it might) but I know XP did that. It creates a small "paging file" to store temporary values but it's still better than letting it swap out the bulk of the applications.

[Timo]

Yeah I do this, single disk to boot the OS, 3 disks in RAID0 for D:, 2 Disks in raid0 for E: (ultra fast disk to disk copies/unrar's/video editing) and backup the lot to a nas box with 1/2TB on it over gigabit, works a treat.

That's pretty extreme!

Hang on, that's a little bit of a generalisation. An 80Gb drive for the OS and 500Gb drive for the Data would be a lot slower than a single 500Gb drive because of the performance difference between the faster 500Gb drive and the slower 80Gb drive. Generally speaking, the larger the capacity the faster the performance (with notable exceptions like the WD Raptor/VelociRaptor.

I call FUD. If the 80GB drive has the operating systems placed at the front of it, and you use the 500GB drive for data, why would that be compromising performance? On the outer edge, an 80GB drive spinning at 7200RPM reads/writes with the same performance as an 500GB drive spinning at 7200RPM.

For general use it's completely absurd to go to any more extremes if you already have the 80GB drive and don't want to buy another one. If you're in the market to buy new drives, then it's different.

Furthermore, if you have two physical disks, you can make backups of each and place them at the back of the other disks for greater security in case one physical disk breaks down (which will eventually happen).