Posted August 30, 2006 · Report post Hi, I have the following five hard drives: 1 Seagate 320 GB 7200.10 1 WD 500 GB KS 1 WD 74 GB Raptor (new one) 16 MB Cache 2 WD 74 GB Raptor (old one) 8 MB of Cache This is my first time build. I have a tv tuner card and may ad another This computer will be used primarily for work, entertainment, and internet I have Windows XP ready to install and plan on downloading VMWARE player and learning linux Do I need to partition hard drives for both XP and Linux? Which Hard Drive(s) would be best to use for the Operating Systems, for Page Filing, for Programs, for Data, for Games and for recording movies, music and sports? Thanks for any advice on this! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted August 31, 2006 · Report post Do I need to partition hard drives for both XP and Linux?Which Hard Drive(s) would be best to use for the Operating Systems, for Page Filing, for Programs, for Data, for Games and for recording movies, music and sports? Just one example (there's many more possible choices as you have so many fast drives and as I understood you do not work with Photoshop, audio editing, video editing): WD 74 GB Raptor (old one) 8 MB of Cache boot, os1, os2, pagefile1 WD 74 GB Raptor (old one) 8 MB of Cache pagefile2, active use data WD 74 GB Raptor (new one) 16 MB Cache programs, games Seagate 320 GB 7200.10 movies, music, less use data WD 500 GB KS archive, backup copy * Notes: - I'm not sure if the new Raptor is better for boot/os or for programs/games drive. - Yes, for XP and Linux you need separate partitions or drives. - If you use Photoshop, then configure the second Raptor also for scratch, too. - If you do video editing, then use the 320 and 500GB drives as source and destination. You could also use Raptors for it if the capacity allows. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted August 31, 2006 (edited) · Report post If you are using VMWare, it makes a lot of sense to have the virtual HDD on a fast HDD. It may be a good idea to not have a page file on the HDD that will be hosting your guest OSs. Note that using VMWare does not require you to partition your HDDs. Edited August 31, 2006 by drizzt81 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted August 31, 2006 · Report post It would be best if you used an internal hot-swap HDD enclosure and installed Windows and Linux each on its own HDD....that way you don't have to worry about the MBR going screwy... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted September 1, 2006 · Report post Could someone help me to understand this a little better? One of the reasons for the many hard drives I have went with is to get the best performance I can without using a RAID array. My goal is to try to avoid as much as possible a waiting line for a read or write to the same drive at the same time. I have 2 GB of system memory. I have the five hard drives, I think I will need to do some partitioning The goal is first peformance, then some sort of automated back up program will be needed. In terms of performance, is there any reason not to cut Microsoft back on my system memory usage to say half a gig? I was thinking it might be good to have OS, Programs and DATA on separate drives, while I don't expect to need page filing too much.. still trying to learn more about it and what drive it would least interfere with and.. does OS need faster seeks, like it would get with raptor or faster reads and writes? Thanks again for any suggestions regarding how to get the hard drives and the whole system memory working best together. Mike Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
