"dual core" hard drives

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Destructo

New Member
is it possible to have an operating system that is broken up onto different hard drives to majorly increase the boot time? the same process could be applied to all programs and games.
 
Destructo said:
is it possible to have an operating system that is broken up onto different hard drives to majorly increase the boot time? the same process could be applied to all programs and games.
Click to expand...

Yup, called Raid 0. Requires two identical drives and if one fails your screwed for data(Doesnt stop me, i still run my drives in raid 0 though).
 
Destructo said:
is it possible to have an operating system that is broken up onto different hard drives to majorly increase the boot time? the same process could be applied to all programs and games.
Click to expand...

Yeah your looking for RAID 0. it splits files apart down the middle and sends one half to each hard drive. so when you call on that file from the hard drives, it takes half as long to load, since there are two hard drives retrieving the data at the same time. but like bomberboysk says, its very dangerous, because in a normal system with two hard drives, if one fails, the other hard drive will keep working. in a RAID system, if one fails, or if the RAID array encounters a single error, all your data is gone.
 
raid is an option.
but the first thing that came to mind is just adding a second hard drive and place os folders/stuff onto there. Like in windows you place the program files folder and/or the swap file onto there. But raid 0 would be a better option.
 
RAID 0 is exactly what i was thinking of. however, it's not all it's cracked up to be. i found an outdated article about RAID 0 that says it only provides a negligible increase in load times. video/audio editing is about the only thing that significantly benefits from RAID except for certain programs that professionals use.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101
 
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Destructo said:
RAID 0 is exactly what i was thinking of. however, it's not all it's cracked up to be. i found an outdated article about RAID 0 that says it only provides a negligible increase in load times. video/audio editing is about the only thing that significantly benefits from RAID except for certain programs that professionals use.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101
Click to expand...

Well, i actually notice better boot times, better overall os speed, better load time in games, etc with my drives in raid 0. If you have some way to backup important data then raid 0 is great(i keep all my important stuff backed up onto 250gig hdd, which i leave powered off when not backing up to keep it so that it lasts longer). Or you could just do dual 250gigs as a boot drive and for games, then have a 1tb or so for important documents, files, etc.
 
I see never tried RAID before....guess I will add it to my next build...though by then SSD should be affordable ^-^
 
i saw this laptop on ebay that uses RAID 0. the two 7200 rpm drives would use up a lot of electricity though. if you get a laptop with two hard drives that isn't using any kind of RAID, do the two hard drives always spin when using the computer?

the laptop the link is to is the Gateway P-173XL FX and the two hard drives with RAID 0 came with it new. that is, they all have two drives with raid 0.
 
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Destructo said:
if you get a laptop with two hard drives that isn't using any kind of RAID, do the two hard drives always spin when using the computer?
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My spare drive spins at first then it enters some kind of sleep mode....but its still spinning just not as fast I think.

I wish I could sleep mode my 320gb storage drive so I could leave it plugged in. As it is I unplug the power when not using it (boot down first) to keep it working longer. Worked very well on my 15,000 hour 8+ year old seagate IDE :)
 
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yeah go make a backup before you continue
138l1347.jpg
 
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