10K RPM Hard Drive Inquiry

[xaelee]

Hello!

i currently have two harddrives:
74GB 10kRPM
500GB 7.2kRPM

right now i have the faster one as my main, i was wondering if this was possible...

i want to dual boot ubuntu and vista together, should i just put them on my 500gb hard drive, and run all my games on the 10krpm? i leave my computer on usually (dont reset comp often). i guess the biggest question is, will i still get full performance from the 10krpm EVEN if it runs as a slave instead of master? if it does, then perhaps ill just run everything on the 500gb, and all the games on the 74gb.

if anyone has any other random sugestions, i would LOVE to hear them please!! thanks! =D

 

[rayzor]

Don't have any experience to answer your specific questions, but from what I've seen the performance difference between 10k and 7.2k drives is pretty small.

 

[blackened144]

I think your best bet would be to keep the OS's on the faster 10k drive and keep the 500 for storage.

 

[ethel]

Is the 10K a Raptor? If not, it's probably slower for the desktop than your 7200 drive.

If it is a Raptor, then yes - put your OS on the Raptor and run apps from it if you have the space. Use the slower drive for your data.

 

[xaelee]

yes, it is a raptor. thanks for the suggestions everyone, but does anyone know the answer to my original question?

basically i just want to know if my 10krpm hard drive will still perform just as fast if i have it as my slave drive and put two operating systems (ubuntu & vista) on the 500gb 7.2krpm drive. my idea is to install all my games on the raptor while running it from my slower, 500gb hard drive. does this make any sense at all? is it just a crappy idea? xD

Thanks!

 

[einstein4pres]

I know of no speed degradation for slave drives. Do you have 2 IDE controllers? If so, you could always put one HD on each. I don't think SATA has slave and masters.

The main benefit to 10k RPM drives is the lower latency, which shouldn't change between master and slave, I should think.

 

[blackened144]

The 10k will perform just as fast no matter how its set up but you wouldnt be making use of some of its best features. OS's are made up of millions of little files that are accessed all the time. The fact that the 10k drive has lower seek times and higher sustained transfer rates means that it would be better served as the drive for your OS so that the OS can find and read those files faster on the 10k drive than on the 7200rpm drive. With its mechanical parts the HDD is the biggest bottleneck in any PC, so the faster the drive the OS is running on, the faster the system will be as a whole.

My suggestion would be to partition the 74g drive into 2 logical drives. Install Vista on the first partition then Ubuntu on the second and keep the 500g for storage. That way each OS will benefit from running on the 10k drive. And now that the new version of Ubuntu has NTFS write built in, Linux can write to the storage drive with no extra configuration involved.

 

[xaelee]

Thanks for the replies!

blackened144, thats exactly what i wanted to hear! thanks! just a quick question if you can answer this or anyone, so far vista takes up around 25 gigs as far as ive been running it, and i heard that it requires around 15gb free space to run freely. does that mean my partition for vista has to be at least 40gb? basically leaving my ubuntu with a bit over 20gb? isnt that a lil tight? i know ubuntu doesnt take up THAT much space, another guy helping me install ubuntu is telling me that if i wanted to add buncha other stuff, it could take up to 60gb or more, depending on how crazy i went. any other suggestions?

THANKS!

 

[onestar]

Ubuntu will not care if it finds itself on the slave (500GB) drive. The boot pointer files can reside on the 74GB and the actual OS can reside on the 500GB with neglible performance penalty. This would be my choice as in your situation I would like to keep the 74GB as free as possible. Blackened144 suggestion is good too, but then you have to repartition your boot drive and have less swap space.

As a side note, most motherboards will allow you to select which drive you wish to boot from in the BIOS. I use this option with the five drives I have installed, as it keeps all my OSs separate and distinct from each other and I still get to see all my files on all the other drives.

 

[choirbass]

as far as vista, it requires about 10-11GB for an install, if youre taking up more than that, its primarily just due to whichever additional applications youre installing, and most of those can probably just be installed on the larger hdd anyhow. as far as ubuntu, same thing, it only requires under 3GB for a full install, and anything more than that, is primarily just due to whichever additional applications you would want to install (again), that arent required.

so, for vista, i would just install any large programs you have on the 500GB (so you dont cut yourself short on space quickly), and keep the majority of your smaller programs (and OS's) on the raptor. as some games are nearing or exceeding 10GB themselves (with expansion packs), and thats by no means a practical use of space, especially when space is at more of a premium.