Hard Drive Speed Question

[begoodbebad]

Heres a question for the clever persons out there. Any advice is appreciated.

I just upgraded my PC with a new case, an extra IDE controller and a new 120 gigabyte HDD specifically so I can share 120 gig of happiness and still do the regular stuff too.

Here's my set up:

40 gig drive with a 5400 drive speed. This is my original drive and hosts my XP OS and my Programs and a 15 gig partition with my music.
80 gig drive with a 7200 drive speed. Until now this has contained all my Movies, ISOs, Archives for P2P and a partition for my Photoshop scratch disk. The drive also contains my documents and pictures (many Gigs).
120 gig drive, the new one. I'm currently transferring most stuff from the 80 gig drive onto this one. My music will follow. This drive will be dedicated for P2P shared folders only.

Here's my question:

My 40 gig drive has a slower spin speed than the other two and it contains my OS. Obviously it is the weak link in terms of speed and is the crucial link also.
But if I remove the 40 gig completely and install/ghost XP etc onto the 80 gig will I see a significant increase in operating speed or is it something you can only notice by objective measurement rather than subjective use?

If I do this but keep the 40 gig drive just for Ghost image back up will it still have any impact on my system speed?

If anyone can help me out before I put the sides back on the case and start hooking everything up again I will cheer up immensely. Thanks. ;-)

[Krell]

This is your test . . . who will answer this one CORRECTLY?

[Induna]

Optimum data transfer is dependent on your motherboard capabilities, IDE controllers, and what type of cable you use. You could have the fastest hard drive in the world, say ATA 150, a motherboard who supports only ATA 100, connected to an ATA 66 cable, then that would be the limit data is transfered, 66Mb/s. The fastest speeds at the moment are the the serial ATA, capable of 150Mb/s transfer speeds. So rpm of your hard drive becomes irrelevant.

If however, you are utilizing the highest data transfer rates possible then I would suggest you use the 7200 as the master, and the slower drive as the slave. Even go as far as to connect on seperate IDE channels. Connect your CD-ROM/CD-R/DVD-ROM/DVD-R drive as the secondary drive on the primary IDE channel.

[Krell]

Not bad . . . and WHYYYY would he want to stagger the hard drives with the CD drives on the two buses?
(give a P2P explanation)

Anyone gonna mention Partitions . . .
(give a P2P explanation)

[Induna]

Not sure what you're getting at Krell. I was always told to attach physical h/ds to seperate channels, less resources used? I dunno.

[begoodbebad]

OK I see I need to offer a little more info:

My MB is the extremely cheap and universally loathed PC Chips 810. ( I run nVidia GeForce AGP graphics and Audigy soundcard to get around its weakest features)
CPU is Athlon XP 1800, true speed 1.5 Ghz.
The memory is 1GB of Samsung PC133 SDRAM (2 x 512)
The MB supports Ultra DMA 33/66/100
The IDE controller is a Promise Ultra100 TX2 and supports a bus speed of 66MHz
Both the MB IDE controller and the plug in controller are cabled to the Maxtor drives with 80 wire 40 pin IDE cable.
The 40 gig drive is a Maxtor fireball
The other two are both Maxtor DiamondMax +9 drives but the ones with only 2MB cache.
My two optical drives are on one MB controller
My 40 gig and 80 gig are on the second MB controller with the 40 (XP OS) as primary master and the 80(data) as slave.
The 120 gig drive is the only drive on the PCI IDE controller and is configured as master
The PCI IDE controller can run up to 4 drives

[Induna]

OK, I think I've figured out what Krell was alluring too. If your using the 120GB *purely* for sharing data over the net then you can use that as a slave drive. The data transfer rate is dependant on your modem speeds.

If you want optimum speed for your OS then the 7200rpm drive would be better than than the 5400rpm drive. But is it really worth the hassle of changing over drives? Installing XP on the faster drive? If you have a lot of programs installed, probably not.

If it's stripped down, bare-boned, like mine, then yes.

[Krell]

When reading and writing to seperate hard drives, it is more efficient to move data FROM one drive on a bus, and TO another drive on another bus, there are less bottlenecks and wait states. It is less work for the controller, and for the hard drives. This will not improve your P2P performance, as broadband is 1\100th or less of the speeds we are talking about here, but the payoff comes in terms of less noise and heat.

When one drive is "Reading" and the heads seek across the platters, it is faster if they are not also "Writing" to unallocated spaces. To Write or move data, the Master File Table has to be accessed AND modified. If the drive has to be written to, then not only does the head have to seek to random free space, but record the locations to the Master File Table.

In P2P, when there is heavy Reading and Writing, such as downloading and sharing out many files, it is much easier, and more quiet, to use one drive to always Write to, and use another to always Read from.

The benefit of having multiple partitions is that, it takes less time to defrag the drives. When files are being written in P2P, they are 100% fragmented. So if you write ALL you downloads to the D: drive, then when they are complete, you MOVE them to the . . . . E: drive.

As the data is written to E:, it is then written in one contiguous line, all together, so you have essentially defragged that file in the move.

Now if you reread what I wrote earlier, it seems like why bother if P2P doesnt benefit? Here's the payoff, who does JUST P2P? I can use two P2P clients at once, such as DC++ where I am some times on a LOT of hubs and downloading a LOT of files .. . and . . still play a DivX full screen with no hicups.

I am READING the movie, from the drive that is READING the other files to share . . so its not too difficult, just more efficient.


.

[Induna]

You're right. One hard drive for one job, a seperate hard drive for another.

What I have is one PC solely for downloading and talking shit on forums :) and another for doing *other things*, whatever that may be.




edit: one PC for downloading as well as uploading. I wouldn't want to be labelled as a leech, heavens forbid!

[Krell]

My 40 gig drive has a slower spin speed than the other two and it contains my OS. Obviously it is the weak link in terms of speed and is the crucial link also.
But if I remove the 40 gig completely and install/ghost XP etc onto the 80 gig will I see a significant increase in operating speed or is it something you can only notice by objective measurement rather than subjective use?

If I do this but keep the 40 gig drive just for Ghost image back up will it still have any impact on my system speed?

No, you will not. Leave things as they are. The only change that I would have made, would possibly be partitioning the larger drives, but as far as SEEING any performance increases, no way.

Also, it helps to specify as
Primary:
Master \ Slave
or
Secondary:
Master \ Slave


One hard drive for one job, a seperate hard drive for another.
Imagine 12 files being written to the D: drive, as the disk spins. Imagine 12 files being read from the E: drive, as it spins.

Now imagine 24 files being access or written and the Master File Table being modified, on a highly fragmented drive, all at once. All the time.


grrrowwell


.

[Induna]

I take your point Krell. I just don't think most people are that desperate to get their data 'outhere' to the www, or more specifically, through a p2p network, in the most effiicent and in some ways self-beneficiary way.

Most people settle for the default c:

Of course I'd like to enlighten them (and I'm talking about people in the real world too... or my world), to the more efficent alternatives, if only to protect their data from a total reformat and re-install scenario

I just don't have the patience like you do.

[begoodbebad]

Originally posted by Krell
No, you will not. Leave things as they are. The only change that I would have made, would possibly be partitioning the larger drives, but as far as SEEING any performance increases, no way.

Also, it helps to specify as
Primary:
Master \ Slave
or
Secondary:
Master \ Slave


One hard drive for one job, a seperate hard drive for another.
Imagine 12 files being written to the D: drive, as the disk spins. Imagine 12 files being read from the E: drive, as it spins.

Now imagine 24 files being access or written and the Master File Table being modified, on a highly fragmented drive, all at once. All the time.


grrrowwell


.

Thanks Krell and Induna too this is exactly what I needed to know. I will leave the original drive as my primary master and configure emule to download and upload on different drives. Interesting stuff about how transferring the fragmented d/l to another place automatically defrags it...I would never have considered that.
Very useful advice, I can configure my scratchdisk and partition the drives with a lot more effectiveness now. I learnt a lot from this thread, thanks everyone.
p.s. you all answered before I even screwed the sides back on the case. wow! :-)

[nasrules]

Originally posted by Krell
The benefit of having multiple partitions is that, it takes less time to defrag the drives. When files are being written in P2P, they are 100% fragmented. So if you write ALL you downloads to the D: drive, then when they are complete, you MOVE them to the . . . . E: drive.

As the data is written to E:, it is then written in one contiguous line, all together, so you have essentially defragged that file in the move.

I'm currently running a 20gb 5400rpm Fireball, and will be adding a nice new 80gb 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda. I also have a DVD and a CD-RW.

My 20gb is split into two 10gb partitions. C:\ is for Windows, Program Files and Apache, while D:\ contains My Documents and all my Music and P2P files.

I was planning on leaving it in the current configuration, adding the 80gb as the slave and moving all my P2P onto the 80gb. Would you reccomend putting one CD drive with the current 20gb, then the other with the 80gb? I would then download to the D:\ and move to the new E:\ once finished.

Whatever I do, it will only stay like that for about 6 months, so it doesn't have to be optimal.