So I've got two 500GB HDs...

[AstralWanderer]

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.

[Fyron]

A mirrored array (RAID 1) provides read performance improvements. The write performance loss is irrelevant outside of a heavy-performance server environment, given the high speeds of disk I/O with modern drives anyways.

NEVER use a basic striped array without parity (RAID 0)! You will lose all of your data when one drive dies. Lack of fault tolerance is worse than useless in a RAID array.

(the striped with parity RAID configurations aren't relevant to this discussion, as Narf is limited to 2 drives)

[AstralWanderer]

Fyron said:
A mirrored array (RAID 1) provides read performance improvements. The write performance loss is irrelevant outside of a heavy-performance server environment, given the high speeds of disk I/O with modern drives anyways.

Assuming that you are using matching disks, the improvements in read and losses in write performance should be marginal, and likely not noticeable outside of benchmarks.

Fyron said:
NEVER use a basic striped array without parity (RAID 0)! You will lose all of your data when one drive dies. Lack of fault tolerance is worse than useless in a RAID array.

Well, never say "never". Disk drive failure is going to be a far rarer occurence for a home user than a software install gone wrong or malware messing up a Windows setup (assuming Narf doesn't have a pair of DeathStars). A 2-drive stripe does double that chance but with a regular backup, the advantages of performance should outweigh the (still very small) risk of data loss.

[Fyron]

Relying on the user making manual backups is not a sound strategy. There will be lapses, and Murphy's Law guarantees that any problems will occur during those lapses.

With sound partitioning strategies, malware infections are trivial to clear out. Give Windows its own 10 GB partition, install apps and save data on another partition. Even with a RAID, formatting the Windows partition and reinstalling to fix deep malware infection isn't that big of a deal.

RAID 0 is never an option. Don't even consider it.

[AstralWanderer]

Fyron said:
Relying on the user making manual backups is not a sound strategy. There will be lapses, and Murphy's Law guarantees that any problems will occur during those lapses.

As I noted above, you can automate backups, and they are very much necessary whether mirroring or not.

Fyron said:
With sound partitioning strategies, malware infections are trivial to clear out....Even with a RAID, formatting the Windows partition and reinstalling to fix deep malware infection isn't that big of a deal.

I disagree. Partitioning can make restoring from a backup easier (providing the option of restoring the Windows partition only to recover from registry corruption without affecting the applications installed) but it most certainly does not make a Windows reinstall easy! Most applications store data in the Windows Registry which will be lost in such an event, meaning that many will need to be reinstalled and reconfigured. The time taken for this can greatly outweigh that of installing and configuring Windows itself (and could take days in the case of a well-developed setup with dozens of applications).

Fyron said:
RAID 0 is never an option. Don't even consider it.

Depends on the situation. I use it and for me the performance benefits outweigh the increased likelihood of disk failure (which a regular image backup takes care of). Indeed, the only situations where mirroring could pose an advantage are those where the data is critical enough to merit using higher RAID levels anyway.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Well, instead I stayed up all night reading fanfiction. But, on the bright side, this is all very informative.

[StarShadow]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Well, instead I stayed up all night reading fanfiction. But, on the bright side, this is all very informative.

Did you at least get the cookies? Personally I suggest having cookies before, during and after the install..

[Fyron]

An image backup of a whole RAID 0 array is going to be crazily large (and you need to backup everything for the inevitable hdd failure). Better to not even bother with RAID 0 and just go with the original plan of two separate disks and manual backups. Its not worth the risks. And as you said, the performance gains are not that relevant for a desktop system. Server, yes. Media center PC, probably not. Gaming/workstation PC? Not really. The CPU is generally a bigger bottleneck in file I/O than the disks themselves in a single user workstation, where the disk isn't being constantly bombarded by requests from dozens to 100s of concurrent users.

A well-developed Windows install doesn't rely on dozens of registry-bound applications. There are always alternatives that store their settings in local files, with only a minimal amount placed in the registry when you run them. Hell, even our reason for being here has never needed to be reinstalled. My SE4 install dates from the original installation back in 2001, which has spanned two separate computers, a failed primary hdd, and half a dozen other MS OS re-installations (some of which involved oscillating between win2k and xp, so I'm not that crazy ). Even SE5 just asks for a CD key on first run.

As time goes on, I find myself having to reinstall fewer and fewer applications with OS reformats. Other than poorly designed MS and Adobe software (and some games), the stuff I do need to reinstall still tends to store the real app data in local files (or at worst in easy to copy/paste Local Settings folders), so reinitializing them is a cinch. It also helps to point a few key folders, like "My Documents," to a different partition with TweakUI (I'd recommend against Program Files, cause a ton of garbage builds up in there; instead install apps you want to keep in D:\Programs). When I reformat, most of my apps can be run directly from the D: partition without any extra effort. A few others need a backed up settings/profile folder copied into the Local Settings folder, and are then good to go. The 3 or 4 apps that actually need installation can just be installed when needed in the future. No big deal.

Would I be better off with disk images for restoration? Not really, since that doesn't remove the cruft that builds up over time, the primary reason for reinstalling the OS. Frequent disk image backups would only let me undo the changes for the past week or two. Malware infections that can't be fixed from safe mode are few and far between, especially with XP SP2 and Vista (anecdotally, I've suffered twice as many hdd failures as irreparable malware infections). A base disk image of the Windows partition post installation and basic setup would help somewhat, but it would fail to be relevant if I ever change hardware components or decide to switch to some different apps. Such necessitates creating a new base image, which over time results in more time and effort than just reinstalling the OS and restoring the Local Settings folders.

Interestingly, a lot of this is just coincidental to the apps I prefer using for various tasks. It seems that the better software design these apps have overall winds its way all the way to the bottom level choices of where to store critical data. The registry was a terrible invention that just needs to fade into dust already...

[Raapys]

I think you must have just been extremely unlucky with your hdds, Fyron. I can't recall the last time I heard of anyone I know having their hdd fail, nor have any of my own hdd's ever failed. You will also find that companies like Dell/Alienware are now selling their high-end computers with Raid0 by default. I wouldn't bother with 'wasting' a hdd on going Raid1 for anything but 'can't risk losing this'- type of data, and I wouldn't store that on my home-entertainment computer at any rate.

The average user might not notice a drastic difference with Raid0's performance increase( unless it's a 2x 10,000 RPM setup, i.e. 3x the speed of a normal hdd ), but it will definitely speed up things like loading of windows, faster loading of applications and demanding games, etc. You'll also get a smoother windows experience in general.

[AstralWanderer]

Fyron said:
An image backup of a whole RAID 0 array is going to be crazily large (and you need to backup everything for the inevitable hdd failure).

For a new Windows system, image backups are going to be a lot smaller (a couple of gigs at most) which is why I suggested using the 160GB to start with for storing them. By the time Narf has enough porn/warez/SE mods to need more space for backups, a bigger drive should be a lot cheaper.

Fyron said:
And as you said, the performance gains are not that relevant for a desktop system. Server, yes. Media center PC, probably not. Gaming/workstation PC? Not really. The CPU is generally a bigger bottleneck in file I/O.

I'd agree with Raapys that games do tend benefit from RAID (faster level loads for example). My previous comments on performance were in relation to partitioning, not RAID setup.

Fyron said:
There are always alternatives that store their settings in local files, with only a minimal amount placed in the registry when you run them...Even SE5 just asks for a CD key on first run.

While there are well-behaved and robust applications that can cope with just having their files plopped on a new system, it is not possible for a user to tell which ones they are without actual testing. The trend seems to be for using the registry more rather than less so it would seem unwise to rely on file-only copying (plus this method can't deal with locked files). Image backups avoid any such problems.

Fyron said:
Would I be better off with disk images for restoration? Not really, since that doesn't remove the cruft that builds up over time, the primary reason for reinstalling the OS. Frequent disk image backups would only let me undo the changes for the past week or two.

Image backups can't deal with "software cruft buildup" true enough - there are other tools for that though (BTW I use Total Uninstall for this to take before and after snapshots of every install - it finds much of what a standard uninstall misses, but since it catches all changes, it is necessary to prune its log to remove those caused by other programs running in the background - and installs requiring a Windows restart require more work due to all the extra changes Windows itself then makes).

However it is in the case of a driver-install gone awry or some major configuration hiccup that an image backup comes into its own.

Fyron said:
Malware infections that can't be fixed from safe mode are few and far between, especially with XP SP2 and Vista (anecdotally, I've suffered twice as many hdd failures as irreparable malware infections).

With malware, Safe Mode is no defense since it can run within it (or disable it) via the SafeBoot registry keys - even Microsoft recommend a complete reformat/reinstall to recover from rootkit infection. Restoring an image backup (assuming you detected the problem before all backups were affected) should be just as effective (and a lot easier for non-experts).

Fyron said:
A base disk image of the Windows partition post installation and basic setup would help somewhat, but it would fail to be relevant if I ever change hardware components or decide to switch to some different apps. Such necessitates creating a new base image, which over time results in more time and effort than just reinstalling the OS and restoring the Local Settings folders.

Some people do use a base image combined with the likes of Power Shadow or Deep Freeze (this Wilders tthread has a good discussion for those interested). It is clearly not going to suit everyone though.

Fyron said:
Interestingly, a lot of this is just coincidental to the apps I prefer using for various tasks. It seems that the better software design these apps have overall winds its way all the way to the bottom level choices of where to store critical data. The registry was a terrible invention that just needs to fade into dust already...

While I'd agree with the registry being a disaster, it seems to be getting more use not less in my experience, with features like Windows Media Centre and Vista's Game Explorer requiring new keys to be set by applications. Add bloatware like .NET Framework (which added over 1MB worth of Registry entries when I monitored it) and I see things getting very much worse, not better.