New HDD configuration

[wtnz]

Hi,

I have 3 new drives in my system and was wondering what anyone can advise me on how to set up my OS, apps and storage.

Firstly I would like to have my OS (windows 7 64bit) by itself on the WD 150GB VelociRaptor HDD.

Secondly, I want to use the WD 300GB VelociRaptor HDD for all my applications.

And finally, I want to use the WD 1TB Black Caviar as storage/data etc.

I have an Intel Q9650 quad and gigabyte mobo with 4gb ram and a gtx275 GPU.

As far as the OS is concerned, what is the best way to format this drive for performance...i.e. do I partition off a section of the 150GB to use as a backup for my OS of windows 7? If so, how much do I need to partition?

Does anybody have any suggestions here as to the best way to go about this, is my idea above correct and will it work properly?

Thanks in advance for any help you good people can offer me, this is my first rig that I have set up myself and I just want to get it right.

 

[The_Other_One]

Most of this is up to you. Personally, I almost always partition my drives to 100%. My feeling is unless you're partitioning the drive to contain two different operating systems, you'll have no real performance or security gain over not partitioning. If the drive fails, both partitions are gone So for your OS, I'd say 100% disk size, then make a drive image for later recovery (not sure if that's what you mean as backup, but always nice to have)

On my computer, I've set the temp and swap files to reside on my 500GB. Given the speed of your primary drive, this could even slow down performance, but it's something to consider... Right click computer > properties > Environment Variables (for temp) and Performance (for swap).

 

[wtnz]

hey, thanks for the quick reply.

By backup i meant an image of my OS, but realise that this should always be on another drive anyways.

You mentioned that you have

set the temp and swap files to reside on my 500GB

, considering the HDD's that I have that run @ 10k rpm would this improve performance in my case? Or would I be best to set them to the OS drive itself?

I will set the partition to 100% as per your suggestion, it makes total sense,

thanks again