Guys, here is a challenge for you...regarding hard disks

[madurax86]

Native Ubuntu programs are really slow what can I say. WINE programs are always a pain to setup, even with a guide.

Anyway, changing OSes are not an option here. Stick to the original requirement. (Because the things I have mentioned are not OS level performance improvements; they are all common to ANY OS.)

hmm ok
then smaller is better to me

 

[zCexVe]

I guess you forgot your glasses when you read the thread . That's not the same thing as I asked in this thread. It's a RAID related question

Wasn't your main question redirected into RAID when we all commented on RAID drives? BTW I would really like to know what is your current config and partitioning coz it went through many minds.

 

[zCexVe]

Now now. Don't make this a flaming thread

Oh,dont worry.I have once done that thing.Poor chanster paid off for it.Besides its news.One have to share it by the means of copy paste to put it here.I can stop it but many will hurt from that.
Besides everyone in EK knows who Sudantha_s is and who zCexVe is And I have accepted that I copy paste news n all and even gave the sites out if someone wants to post news.

And check hardwaresecrets articles.I remeber they had some article for your question.Im sorry I am not even 100% sure that it was in HWsecrets.

 

[Anusha]

Wasn't your main question redirected into RAID when we all commented on RAID drives? BTW I would really like to know what is your current config and partitioning coz it went through many minds.

Nope. I already have RAID-0. And there is not much of a performance difference in day to day task with RAID0 vs no RAID0, I guess due to superfetch.

My setup is this: http://www.elakiri.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3109447&postcount=9

But I moved the whole user profiles folder to the 500GB drive with no partitioning (or 1 partition) and moved less frequently used files to the end of the RAID volume, such as the software setups (about 35GB), game ISOs (about 100GB) and virtual machine drives (about 30GB)

 

[Anusha]

hmm ok
then smaller is better to me

Anything to back that idea up?

 

[Anusha]

Oh,dont worry.I have once done that thing.Poor chanster paid off for it.Besides its news.One have to share it by the means of copy paste to put it here.I can stop it but many will hurt from that.
Besides everyone in EK knows who Sudantha_s is and who zCexVe is And I have accepted that I copy paste news n all and even gave the sites out if someone wants to post news.

And check hardwaresecrets articles.I remeber they had some article for your question.Im sorry I am not even 100% sure that it was in HWsecrets.

No worries I gave up the re-RAIDing idea. I'll have one big 500GB volume and have it logically partitioned.

 

[madurax86]

Anything to back that idea up?

umm small harddrives are easy to seek ...if u put a 60GB SATA[if there is] harddrive to a core 2 duo 1gb ram system wont it run better than a 160gb harddrive on the same system?

 

[zCexVe]

]But I moved the whole user profiles folder to the 500GB drive with no partitioning (or 1 partition)[/U] and moved less frequently used files to the end of the RAID volume, such as the software setups (about 35GB), game ISOs (about 100GB) and virtual machine drives (about 30GB)

! partition of 500GB is not good in my opinion.I mean if the partition table gets corrupted and testdisk cant restore the patition table you are risking more than your life.(Thats in my opinion too) . And usually NTFS searches the index and if not found search earlier if passed the number go backwards like type,isnt it? So a bigger partition means more seek time,Doesn't it?

 

[zCexVe]

No worries I gave up the re-RAIDing idea. I'll have one big 500GB volume and have it logically partitioned.

Me and Mahen have a common friend.If he installs quicktime his RAID array fails.LOL Wonder how these intergrated RAID controllers work

 

[Anusha]

umm small harddrives are easy to seek ...if u put a 60GB SATA[if there is] harddrive to a core 2 duo 1gb ram system wont it run better than a 160gb harddrive on the same system?

Nope it won't.

Because you see, if you consider both the drives to use a single platter, and same technology, you can draw a graph like that.



See, the average seek times for the 60GB one and 160GB are same, but if you consider first 60GB of the 160GB (where the OS and programs reside most of the times), the seeks are lower, and hence better responsiveness.

Also the raw transfer rate wise, the first 60GB of the 160GB drive has a higher average.

Also, higher the density, higher the sectors that pass under one rotational sweep of the header, and more bits can be read per rotation, hence again faster.

 

[Anusha]

! partition of 500GB is not good in my opinion.I mean if the partition table gets corrupted and testdisk cant restore the patition table you are risking more than your life.(Thats in my opinion too) . And usually NTFS searches the index and if not found search earlier if passed the number go backwards like type,isnt it? So a bigger partition means more seek time,Doesn't it?

Bigger partition means more "average" seek times because it is not short stroking. But it's a data drive. I don't need performance. This is where Diskeeper comes in. It can organize the data on access patterns moving the frequently accessed files to the faster end of the partition.

I don't know how, but non-indexed searching in Vista is as fast as indexed searching in XP. There is no problem as to indexing, as I have indexed the files I search.

Anyway the decision to have one partition in the 500GB one is else it would result in a data plan that I don't like.

 

[zCexVe]

Bigger partition means more "average" seek times because it is not short stroking. But it's a data drive. I don't need performance. This is where Diskeeper comes in. It can organize the data on access patterns moving the frequently accessed files to the faster end of the partition.

I don't know how, but non-indexed searching in Vista is as fast as indexed searching in XP. There is no problem as to indexing, as I have indexed the files I search.

Anyway the decision to have one partition in the 500GB one is else it would result in a data plan that I don't like.

Hmm.What version of diskeeper do you use? I still use 2007.It has optimized my drive[250GB] really well.I should plug the 500GB and leave the PC on for a day to optimize it and should change to work on 500GB.

 

[HIVOLTAG3]

! partition of 500GB is not good in my opinion.I mean if the partition table gets corrupted and testdisk cant restore the patition table you are risking more than your life.(Thats in my opinion too) . And usually NTFS searches the index and if not found search earlier if passed the number go backwards like type,isnt it? So a bigger partition means more seek time,Doesn't it?

yep good 1.. what hpp if mbr/toc get failz in 500gb[unpartitioned].u get more chance to loose all the data...

 

[HIVOLTAG3]

hey actually i cant figure it out,what is ur goal here??...
preformance, utilization, or life time??

 

[zCexVe]

hey actually i cant figure it out,what is ur goal here??...
preformance, utilization, or life time??

Good luck with the answer

 

[Anusha]

Hmm.What version of diskeeper do you use? I still use 2007.It has optimized my drive[250GB] really well.I should plug the 500GB and leave the PC on for a day to optimize it and should change to work on 500GB.

2008

 

[Anusha]

hey actually i cant figure it out,what is ur goal here??...
preformance, utilization, or life time??

Performance, but not raw throughput. Mostly highest responsiveness. Say, when you are copying a large file or extracting a large archive, you should not be held back from general tasks such as launching an application, browsing, listening to music etc. If the program you are trying to load is in the same drive as where you are copying the files to/from, it will take forever to launch the application ne? I want to minimize that effect.

 

[HIVOLTAG3]

Performance, but not raw throughput. Mostly highest responsiveness. Say, when you are copying a large file or extracting a large archive, you should not be held back from general tasks such as launching an application, browsing, listening to music etc. If the program you are trying to load is in the same drive as where you are copying the files to/from, it will take forever to launch the application ne? I want to minimize that effect.

ok

here is a little clue.. for extracting archive, tht process usually use more cpu than other procs, eventually other oparation get delayed[with same priority level].

i think that we cannot overcome that final prob by using a single hdd. if we launh app from same drive which copy something[larg file] from/to, thats is a matter of seek time and data rate of hdd. solution is using stripped raid [raid-0].
[im sugstn that u should use pci-e RAID controller], as raid-0 dosnt hv fault tolerance, u should use this raid only for os/appz like stuff.

anyway u hv already given up the raid idea ne?..

 

[Anusha]

ok

here is a little clue.. for extracting archive, tht process usually use more cpu than other procs, eventually other oparation get delayed[with same priority level].

i think that we cannot overcome that final prob by using a single hdd. if we launh app from same drive which copy something[larg file] from/to, thats is a matter of seek time and data rate of hdd. solution is using stripped raid [raid-0].
[im sugstn that u should use pci-e RAID controller], as raid-0 dosnt hv fault tolerance, u should use this raid only for os/appz like stuff.

anyway u hv already given up the raid idea ne?..

Well, the archives i extract are those huge torrent files and they are IO intensive, not CPU intensive.

I have not given up RAID-0. But RAID doesn't overcome the slowness due to access time. For example, I did a image backup of C: drive (RAID-0 first partition) to the final partition of the RAID volume as well as the single 500GB drive. (Note that, even a single drive in the RAID-0 volume is faster than the 500GB drive) Saving the image in the RAID volume took over 4 minutes, while saving it to the 500GB drive took only 2 minutes.

And yes, I use the RAID volume for Windows, Programs and Games. Final partition is used for less frequently used data (those data is backed up anyway)

 

[lasith_hasantha]

No idea machan