Hard Drive Configuration Help!

[wamason]

Lo everyone. I've made a few changes to my PC setup in the last week. Here's what I'm working with now (It's not assembled yet).

 

Silverstone SST-LC01

DFI Lanparty Ultra NF2 Rev. B

Athlon XP-M 2600

Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (R360)

GEIL Golden Dragon 2x512MB PC3200

NEC ND-3500A DVD-R/RW (firmware hack to increase DVD rip speed)

LG 52x32x52 CDR-RW

2x200GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA HDD's (RAID 0)

2x80GB WD SE HDD's

Adaptec VideOh! PCI Capture Card

Modded Thermaltake Bigwater 12CM Liquid Cooling kit

 

 

Here's my question: I've heard from some people that it's better to put Windows XP on a RAID drive because of speed. I've heard from others that you should put Windows XP on a regular single HD, and put all of your apps on the RAID drive. I'm curious as to which method will give me best performance.

 

I play games alot, but I also capture alot of video (after alot of research, I found that the Adaptec card does do MPEG-2 hardware encoding, the software just sucks).

 

I've thought of two possible layouts:

Install XP on single 80GB WD

Use other single WD 80GB HD for backups

Split RAID array into two partitions - one for apps, the other for video (mainly to keep them separated)

 

Two:

Split RAID array into two partitions - one for apps, the other for Windows XP

Use one single WD HDD for video

Use other single WD HDD for backups

 

If anyone has any advice on this subject, I'd love to hear it

 

Thanks!

[TechFreak]

well, if your motherboard will allow you to do it, I'd choose the 2nd option.

[CPU_Cooker]

Well,

The Raid is going to be 400GB, That is a lot of space.

Maybe option #2, make an 80GB partition on the Raid for Windows and programs, which can be backed up with one of the 80's

Then you have another 320GB on the raid for video, and then use the other 80 for permanant / final renders.

 

I would keep all the apps and everything on the same drive as XP, so if you ever change drives or add new drives, you don't have to worry about things getting messed up or showing up in the wrong place.

 

Once upon a time, I added a new drive and all my drive letters changed. Granted I really did not know what I was doing way back then, but it really screwed up a lot of apps that were on another drive. This was back in the 2GB drive limit days(read:FAT16) and if you had more than 1 HDD...well I just remember having drives C through L or something like that. It was a mess there for a while.

 

 

CPU_Cooker