# Dual HDD, storage and OS



## Exile_Chavez (Jan 10, 2010)

Ok, this is again only my 3 post, so please don't be to mean. I have thought about upgrading my current HDD setup(640GB 7200RPM) and changing it to 
-640GB 7200RPM, for storage
-20GB 10000RPM for Windows 7 64 bit

Would this be worth the switch? I would rather not fork out the 3 digit price on a SSD.


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## Kursah (Jan 10, 2010)

Well 20GB is pretty low for an OS drive imo. If it was Xp I'd say go for it, but Vista and 7 both use a healthy amount of space, really I'd recommend a 40GB min OS drive in all honesty. Sure you might not hit that 20GB mark, but you'll get close as the OS updates, service packs get released, things get installed and what-not. I personally use a 50GB OS partition on one of my 640GB drives, set the rest for data/games/storage and call it good.


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 10, 2010)

OK, thank you for the feed back. You by chance wouldn't know quite how to set that up would you?


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## AsRock (Jan 10, 2010)

yep 20GB is way to low.


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## Kursah (Jan 10, 2010)

You can do it with during install, there will be an options tab after you select your HDD. It'll have options to set up partitions, format, remove partitions, etc.

If you want 40GB on the nose, just do 40x1024= 40960. The 7 and Vista setup have a pretty handy HDD format/partition/resize utility that works very well.


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 11, 2010)

Ok, so them what do I do with the storage drive? Just leave 7 on it? or something else?


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## Kursah (Jan 11, 2010)

Well if you're making an OS partition, you wanna put 7 on that I would assume. Then you'll make the rest of the drive it's own partition. So C: will be Windows 7, D: will be storage, data, programs, games, etc. That's how I do it at least. Wouldn't make sense to make an OS drive and install the OS on the data drive!


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 11, 2010)

That wouldn't make sense. But how would I get rid of the 7 already on the storage drive. By the way I do not have a external drive.


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## Kursah (Jan 11, 2010)

Well what I would do is delete all partitions on that drive (be aware of backing up anything you want to keep), then make new partitions, they should automatically be formatted upon creation. Install to the OS partition, bam clean slate, good to go.

If you are unable to backup your info, you might want to see if that 20GB drive can come in handy, I dunno how much MB or GB worth of stuff you wanna keep. I usually backup the C:\Users folder from previous OS installs to keep my savegames primarily. So you have some decisions to make, but you will really want to start the drive off fresh and clean, and will have to if you want to partition it up correctly without issues or errors.


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 11, 2010)

So I think I have this covered now. The C:\ Users folder wouldn't work for me, I have over 120GB of crap in my profile alone. Ill ask around and my friend might let me use his. Thanks everyone for help


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## Nick89 (Jan 11, 2010)

I don't think you could find a 20GB HDD.


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## n-ster (Jan 11, 2010)

a second 640gb WD is a better option IMO... RAID 0


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## RejZoR (Jan 11, 2010)

For Win7 and or Vista you need at least 40GB to work comfortably. Especially if you have lots of RAM, you use Hibernation function and you have System Restore enabled. That alone takes gigabytes in a snap.


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 11, 2010)

So I can assume from that, that a 60GB 10kRPM drive should cover it?


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## DirectorC (Jan 11, 2010)

60GB is about the bare minimum you could roll with for OS drive.  That's what I consume with Vista or Win7 and all my random apps, plus Office, Nero, Creative Studio and about 3 large games installed.


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## RejZoR (Jan 11, 2010)

60GB is enough. I'm using 50GB partition for Win7 64bit and it's enough if you slightly lower the % usage of System Restore.


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## STUdog (Jan 11, 2010)

n-ster said:


> a second 640gb WD is a better option IMO... RAID 0



Dont raid 0 mechanical HDDS for your OS 

60gb is more than enoguh for JUST the OS

Some things to look at,   Buy a 30GB SSD, Use all of it for your windows install,  I am running windows 7 server on a 30gb partition

Partition your 640gb WD into 90gb and 550gb

So it will look like this

C:\- 30gb SSD - Dont install anything else here once OS installed except for drivers,keep it clean
D:\ - 90gb of 640gb - Use only for installed programs, ie ms office, apps, 
E:\ - 500gb - All for just random storage

This is just an example on what to do

benefits of this is you can pretty much do a format anytime and only need to back up ur user profile and wont lose your other drives

Take a copy of ur registry where your games are isntalled to, restore the reg keys and you wont even need to install your games again


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 12, 2010)

I might do that


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## n-ster (Jan 12, 2010)

STUdog said:


> Dont raid 0 mechanical HDDS for your OS
> 
> 60gb is more than enoguh for JUST the OS
> 
> ...



raid 0 for HDDs isn't that risky at all.... It will last until either one of the HDDs fail... but with good quality HDDs, this shouldn't be much of a problem... and raid 0 would be faster than the 10kRPM


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 12, 2010)

Very interesting. I have never heard of the "RAID" feature with HDD. Can you tell me more?


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## STUdog (Jan 13, 2010)

n-ster said:


> raid 0 for HDDs isn't that risky at all.... It will last until either one of the HDDs fail... but with good quality HDDs, this shouldn't be much of a problem... and raid 0 would be faster than the 10kRPM



I never said it was risky,  they are just too damn slow, no matter how many you have,  raid 0 is for storage only,

I have 16x 1.5tb drives in RAID0,   no one needs to talk to me about being risky,


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## DirectorC (Jan 13, 2010)

STUdog said:


> I never said it was risky,  they are just too damn slow, no matter how many you have,  raid 0 is for storage only,
> 
> I have 16x 1.5tb drives in RAID0,   no one needs to talk to me about being risky,



Well you sexy bastard!


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## n-ster (Jan 13, 2010)

well a 10k HD is slower than 2 7.2k HDs in RAID 0 obviously...

TBH, if it is only for the OS and nothing else, an SSD is not that great... if he games, at least put the game you play the most in their, if you use office alot, put that in there, put all those little programs that you use often... not just the OS


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## STUdog (Jan 13, 2010)

U guys dont understand,  a 10k drive is prob better than 2x 7.2rpm in raid 0 for OS

Wen u have mechanical hdds in RAID 0 there response times blow out,

For OS drive you need a hdd with the fastest response times possible due to the very small and fast amount of files read and written fromt he OS

Do a benchmark on any 4 Drive RAID 0 setup (not SSDs) and change the block size or byte siz to like 512k or less, the array will perform at like 40mb/sec

And as for games that is pretty much the same as the OS for some games,  Little files that need to be read quickly

RAID 0 setup only flog single hdds in large file transfers


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## n-ster (Jan 13, 2010)

OMG a 10k drive is already barely faster than a 7.2k... And the access time barely increases in raid 0...


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## STUdog (Jan 13, 2010)

Please explain your term "faster"   I refer that to many things,   Raw speed,  Access time, IOPS, Cacheble Speed,

I work in servers and know what im talking about when it comes to raids and drives,


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 14, 2010)

And also, how much faster is faster?


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## n-ster (Jan 14, 2010)

IMO, save your money for now... use UltimateDefrag to get faster speeds on your HD (outer edges are faster  so you put all frequently used files there


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## STUdog (Jan 14, 2010)

Exile_Chavez said:


> And also, how much faster is faster?





Faster is anything than performs better than the device comparing it with but only the test/operation you are performing.


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 15, 2010)

STUdog said:


> Faster is anything than performs better than the device comparing it with but only the test/operation you are performing.



Speed like numbers wise. How many more GB/s would RAID get than a 10k drive?


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## Exile_Chavez (Jan 17, 2010)

So from what I am getting from this is that: 

RAID 0 with 2 7200RPM drives(80GB OS, 640GB Storage) is faster than RAID 0 10kRPM and 7200RPM(80GB OS[10k], 640GB Storage[7200])

Or just a 7200RPM and 10k?


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