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Tricks with 2 drives

post #1 of 9
12/18/02 at 8:33pm
Thread Starter 
Does anyone know if you can mirror or stripe with two drives in an 8886. Does the mobo support RAID?

Also, is there any benefit do you think to putting the OS on one drive and Programs on the other (don't know where to put the data...).

Just looking for that last little bit extra...
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post #2 of 9
12/18/02 at 10:09pm
yes i would DEFINATELY think that there is a benefit in having your information on a different drive (not neccessarily another physical drive but a partition of one). Your operating system and unimportant programs and information that you don't particularly care about on one partition/drive and important stuff on the other... or however you wanna configure this... the point is that if your operating system crashes, you can still save all of the other stuff on the other partition. then to reinstall windows wouldn't mean to get rid of ALL ur stuff... just the stuff that was on the same drive/partition as the OS would have to go with the OS...
am i confusing?? if not i hope that's what u were asking!

the kreep
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post #3 of 9
12/18/02 at 10:33pm
Thread Starter 
Yup,
I get the idea of having OS and everything else separated for safety.

But what I was thinking was by having the OS on one drive (not just a separate partition) and applications on another, that would increase throughput somewhat, since the CPU could have both drives going concurrently during normal use.

What do you think?
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post #4 of 9
12/18/02 at 10:42pm
oo i see... after pondering the question for a second i have theorized that having the two drives with apps on one and opperating system on the other would increase performance slightly... as long as they aren't both on the same cable (ide, eide, wutever they use the laptops. I believe somebody sed possible a variant of eide...). Would the cable ever limit a lappie hard drive?? somebody else is gunna have to verify the cable thing... actually, maybe the other thing too...

hope this helps a little.

the kreep
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post #5 of 9
12/18/02 at 10:49pm
Thread Starter 
Well, the drives are so slow compared to the CPU, that the CPU with DMA wouldn't have any difficulty keeping up to two datastreams at once from two different drives.

But in the real world I don't know if the difference would be very noticeable. I was just wondering if anyone had done it and could tell us.

Thanks for your thoughts.
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post #6 of 9
12/18/02 at 11:16pm
I know that separating the data from the OS will make a desktop faster, I'd be willing to bet that the same will work on a laptop too, but with a 40 GB HD and only 5400 rpm as your max, I don't think you'd FEEL a difference and would only be wasting precious HD space.

The only benefit I see is that when you need to format or if the OS drive goes all funky on you, then your data is protected.

One year old Dell huh? Lets see...the computer I'm using right now is a...
Dell 500 MHz P3
192 MB RAM (64 MB original, upgraded last month) (PC100)
16 MB Voodoo3 3000 Vid card
Windows 98 SE
13.6 MB HD

Cost at purchase time: $1,163.00

And it's heavy as a rock!
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post #7 of 9
12/18/02 at 11:24pm
Thread Starter 
OK,

I guess I'm not *really* suffering too badly

It's just that the thought of a 3 GHz laptop with fast graphics and hyperthreading (maybe in a few months) makes my 1 Ghz machine seem like yesterday's news...
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post #8 of 9
12/19/02 at 12:44am
Putting your data (your data... not your programs) on a separate physical drive or partition is a great idea because you won't lose it if something happens to the OS, as kreep said. However, if you have two physical drives, putting your programs on the nonwindows drive would not be a good idea... the better idea would be to put your page file on the other physical drive. Leave your programs on the windows drive, and let the lappy access the page file on the separate drive. That way it is not reading and writing on one drive at the same time.
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post #9 of 9
12/19/02 at 5:00pm
that's how i have my desktop setup.. moving the paging file to the non-system drive seemed to have really helped.

i wonder, are sager hard drive installs (in modular) user serviceable? perhaps i will have mister PCTORQUE send me a second drive. this is so convenient having everything in a little 12 lb box.
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