Are two 30's faster than one 80?

[Redmondite]

I'm setting up a Win2000 system and can use either two 30 GB 2 MB cache 5400
rpm drives as C: and D: or a single 80 GB 8 MB cache 7200 rpm drive split
into C: and D:

The questions is: which system will be faster in the real world? And, if
the two drive setup is faster, what's the best tuned configuration? I'm
driving myself nuts doing modeling and figure someone out there's actually
lived with these.

Thanks for your real world insights in advance.

PS: I'd put the 30 GB drives on separate EIDE channels naturally.

 

[John R Weiss]

I'm setting up a Win2000 system and can use either two 30 GB 2 MB cache 5400
rpm drives as C: and D: or a single 80 GB 8 MB cache 7200 rpm drive split
into C: and D:

The questions is: which system will be faster in the real world? And, if
the two drive setup is faster, what's the best tuned configuration?

The higher speed and much larger cache of the 80 seems to be the much better
choice. However, you could just as well use all 3 drives (or the 80 and a 30,
if you're out of EIDE space with CDs and DVDs).

If you use the 80+30 setup, you will have to do a bit of experimenting to find
out if putting the swap file on the 30 will be faster. I think it will,
especially if you have 256+ MB RAM, because of less head travel on the 80. My
recommendation would be a 6 GB boot sector C: on the 80; partition the rest of
the 80 as you like for apps and data (I'd divide the remainder in half). On the
30, make a dedicated 1 GB partition for the page file (2 GB if you have 1 GB
RAM), and use the rest for data archive/backup.

 

[Redmondite]

The higher speed and much larger cache of the 80 seems to be the much better
choice. However, you could just as well use all 3 drives (or the 80 and a 30,
if you're out of EIDE space with CDs and DVDs).

If you use the 80+30 setup, you will have to do a bit of experimenting to find
out if putting the swap file on the 30 will be faster. I think it will,
especially if you have 256+ MB RAM, because of less head travel on the 80. My
recommendation would be a 6 GB boot sector C: on the 80; partition the rest of
the 80 as you like for apps and data (I'd divide the remainder in half). On the
30, make a dedicated 1 GB partition for the page file (2 GB if you have 1 GB
RAM), and use the rest for data archive/backup.

Yes I know that an 80+30 or 80+30+30 would lead to the fastest setup but I'm
building a new system and need to keep the old one running. SOOOO it's
either 30+30 in the new or 80. The old system is too slow for graphics work
so I want the fastest setup possible for the new one, leaving the old one
for email, surfing, etc. Hence the original question.

If 30+30 is faster then I'll need to move everything off of the 30's and
onto the new 80. If the 80's faster then life is simpler since I can do a
fresh install.

 

[John R Weiss]

Yes I know that an 80+30 or 80+30+30 would lead to the fastest setup but I'm
building a new system and need to keep the old one running. SOOOO it's
either 30+30 in the new or 80.

If 30+30 is faster then I'll need to move everything off of the 30's and
onto the new 80. If the 80's faster then life is simpler since I can do a
fresh install.

In general:

The 8 MB cache in the 80 will have more advantage than a few msec of
transfer speed rating.

The 7200 RPM speed of the 80 will allow faster transfer rates than the 5400
RPM on the 30s.

Unless you can stripe the 30s in a RAID 0 configuration, they will be
inherently slower than the 80.

If you have sufficient RAM (512 MB - 1 GB), the system will make minimal use
of the pagefile, except when manipulating LARGE gfx.

New is better than old

Big is better than small.

Use the 80 in the new system; 6 GB boot partition. Pagefile on the boot
partition (some may argue to use the data partition).

 

[Colon Terminus]

In answer to your basic question "Are two 30GB 5400 RPM drives faster than a
single 80GB 7200 RPM drive?"

No.