Re: So I\'ve got two 500GB HDs...
Arralen said:
Use the 2 HDDs in RAID configuration, and backup to external HDD regularly, but don't have it connected (and running) all the time.
This applies if the drives are striped (data shared between them) - the other 2-drive option of mirroring (drives holding identical copies) will improve resiliency, not performance.
The downside is if you are using a "fake RAID" chipset (e.g. Nvidia nForce) rather than a real RAID controller, then you will not be able to install Windows to it directly (yes, Nvidia do provide SATA and RAID drivers for a Windows install and no - their RAID ones don't work since they have missing files - the only working option is a Windows install CD with the drivers included). You can install Windows onto just one drive and then stripe it later though. The 160GB drive should be OK for backup use initially (it should cope with 200-250GB of data with compression) and you could get a larger disk later on once you start filling that 500GB.
Another thing to watch out for with Nvidia "RAID" is that it relies on a background process (nvraidservice) - if this gets shut down for any reason, your RAID setup could get corrupted.
Moving the Documents... folder may be a bit of a challenge since you will have files in there open and locked while logged into Windows (the user hive of the Windows Registry notably). One method that worked for me was to keep the Docs folder for the Administrator account on the Windows partition, but to move all other accounts into a folder on the data partition - this required some RegEdit work.
As for improving performance, having adequate memory will do far more than any disk partitioning.
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