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

[narf poit chez BOOM]

...And time to put them in, tomorrow.

My plan is: I takes the old 30GB HD out, puts a new 500GB HD in, partitionses it into a Windowses partition and a datas partition, copies the non-Windows XP stuff over froms the 160GB HD to the datas partition on the 500GB HD, removeses the 160GB HD, install Windowses XP onto the Windowses partition on the 500GB HD, useses TweakUI to tells windowses XP that the Documentses and Settingses and Programses Files folders are on the datas partition.

Ze plan is ready?

Hmm...Did forget something: Add in other 500GB HD, use it for backup, eat cookie.

Also: Buy cookies.

[Arralen]

Suggestion for speeding up the PC considerably:

Put 2 partition on that 2nd drive: 20-50GB at the beginning, and the rest.
Move pagefile.sys to to that first part on the 2nd HDD , and set it to fixed sized 3*RAM.
Set pathes to all TEMP folders to a TEMP folder on that 1st part. too.


Suggestion for speeding up the PC much more - if the motherboard/controller supports that:
Use the 2 HDDs in RAID configuration, and backup to external HDD regularly, but don't have it connected (and running) all the time.

[Atrocities]

I solved a rubiks cube. Twice.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Thanks, that sounds like a good idea.
As for the RAID array, I'd need a third HD and I'm not dripping money. Using the second one as backup will work well enough.


...I've solved rubix cubes, too...

...Of course, I don't think prying the cubes off and putting it back together really counts...

[Fyron]

You do not need a 3rd drive to do RAID; just set up RAID 1 (never RAID 0) so all data is mirrored between the drives. If one drive kicks the bucket, all data is still there on the other. You get a bit of a write penalty and a read gain, but the main benefit is the fault tolerance. Since the whole point of the second drive was backup anyways, losing access to half the total storage space shouldn't be an issue. RAID 1 will do a far better job of backing up data than you could ever do manually. Automation is the key to backups.

Yes, it is technically better to use RAID 3 or 5 in terms of lost percent of storage space, but its not strictly necessary for a desktop computer. A media center would be better off with more drives and a higher RAID level, due to all the massive movie files, but you aren't doing that I think.

[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:
You do not need a 3rd drive to do RAID; just set up RAID 1 (never RAID 0) so all data is mirrored between the drives. If one drive kicks the bucket, all data is still there on the other. You get a bit of a write penalty and a read gain, but the main benefit is the fault tolerance. Since the whole point of the second drive was backup anyways, losing access to half the total storage space shouldn't be an issue. RAID 1 will do a far better job of backing up data than you could ever do manually. Automation is the key to backups.

For a home user, mirroring is likely to be overkill and it only covers hard drive failure. For situations like a messed-up configuration or serious malware infection, mirroring would not help at all, since the copy would have the exact same problem. A regular (weekly or so) disk image backup (using software like Drive Snapshot or Acronis TrueImage (both of which can make backups of system partitions in the background and can be automated via Task Manager) would likely serve better and these could be done to the 160GB disk initially.

[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.