Need advice on hard drive(s) setup for optimum performance under these circumstances

[alexjbriggs]

Hi all! looking for some advice for optimal performance using the following hardware.

Notes:
OS: Will be running Windows 10 Professional 64bit.

Primary uses: Normal day to day computing, Medium to Heavy Photoshop and Dreamweaver usage, Mild gaming (older games, and only occasionally, until I upgrade my video card), Office 365 usage, potentially at some point using programming environments, but not important right now.

My main advice I'm seeking is the optimal setup of my drives. Any advice is much appreciated.

Setup:

Basics:
- Phenom II x2 B55 unlocked via MoBo for full Quad Core.
- 8GB DDR3 1800mhz RAM
- Visiontek 4870 512MB 256bit GBBR5 (DX 10.1, OpenGL 2.0, PCI-e, 800 stream processors, 750mhz core clock)

Drives:
- Primary OS drive: 60GB SSD (530read/430write rated), although my motherboard is only Sata II and 3.0, so not reaching nearly those speeds.

- Secondary drive: 1TB 5400 RPM

- Other drives: 2 - 120GB 5400RPM drives

So here is my thinking:
- I use the SSD to install the OS, as well as my essential applications; PS, Dreamweaver, Office, etc
- The 1TB drive will be strictly a data drive, to store music, photos, documents, etc.
- As for the 2 120gb drives, especially considering they are only 5400rpm drives, I am considering putting these two drives into a RAID 0 array and using them strictly as my photoshop scratch disk.

Any feedback on this setup? Anything I can do differently or additionally to optimize performance without having to buy additional hardware?

What about tweaking page file settings? Should I partition the 1TB to set up a dedicated partition of a decent size to dedicate toward page filing? Or is it too slow of a drive to do so? Perhaps I should partition the RAID 0 array and use part of it for scratch disk and part for page filing? Can that even be done? Or should I leave page filing on the SSD and stick to the setup I mentioned (OS and apps on SSD, 1TB for general storage, and 2x120gb is raid 0 strictly for PS scratch disk)?

Any advice would be very much appreciated! Thank you in advance!

I receive my SSD in the mail tomorrow, so I'm trying to have a solid plan before then.

 

[clarkjd]

I would suggest using the 2 120gb disks in Raid0 for the page file as well as the scratch file. Just make sure that you limit the page file to a specific size, (say 16GB) so it won't fill up your array.

 

[geofelt]

1. 60gb is not enough for windows. It will fill up quickly and slow down and lose endurance when it gets 90% full.
I would return it in favor of at least 120gb. Sataa 2 is not a problem for random I/O which is what the os does mostly; you are ok there.

2. You will probably lose performance with raid-0
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.

5400rpm drives are designed for power savings, not performance.
Use them for scratch disk with the input on one and the output on the other.
You can probably buy 10k raptors on ebay for $5 each.

In the end, realize that your cpu is very old and even the cheapest modern skylake G4400 has twice the compute performance and the integrated graphics is comparable to your 4870.
I would not be spending much to upgrade the current pc.

Page file needs performance above all. Leave it on the ssd.

 

[natpalmer1776]

If you can handle your OS and applications taking longer to load at startup, I would recommend putting your OS & Applications on the 1TB HDD. Use the SSD to store your commonly accessed project files for faster project loading, switching, and saving.

While it takes longer to get everything up and running, you will be more productive as you will not have to wait as long for the application to load your files and its' various components into memory.

With your applications and OS on the 1TB HDD, and current projects on the SSD, I would recommend putting the 2 120GB HDDs into a RAID array of your preference to use as a project archive. Personally, I would go for a mirrored raid array for data security, as if one fails you will have a backup.

Hope this helps

 

[alexjbriggs]

@clarkjd

Thank you for the advice!

Question - should I partition the two RAID drives into two separate partitions if I'm going to take that route that you advised? One partition for the scratch disk and one for the page file?

If so, how big should I make the partition for the page file? If it helps, I only need around 80-100gb for my scratch disk, ask I don't work with overly large files in PS. That being said, what's the maximum page file you suggest I allot? Should I stick to the 16gb as you mentioned? Or is bigger better?

Or, is partitioning it not necessary? If it's not necessary but won't hurt anything, I'd prefer to have separate partitions, the OCD in me likes to keep things separate and tidy, hehe.

Thanks again!

 

[clarkjd]

@clarkjd

Thank you for the advice!

Question - should I partition the two RAID drives into two separate partitions if I'm going to take that route that you advised? One partition for the scratch disk and one for the page file?

If so, how big should I make the partition for the page file? If it helps, I only need around 80-100gb for my scratch disk, ask I don't work with overly large files in PS. That being said, what's the maximum page file you suggest I allot? Should I stick to the 16gb as you mentioned? Or is bigger better?

Or, is partitioning it not necessary? If it's not necessary but won't hurt anything, I'd prefer to have separate partitions, the OCD in me likes to keep things separate and tidy, hehe.

Thanks again!

I would partition the array into two logical volumes. I have a rule of thumb(mine, but it has served me well) of having a page file twice the size of my installed ram (4GB page file for a 2 GB machine, 8 for a 4, and 16 for an 8.), so have 1 partition, say 16-17 GB for the page file and use the rest for your scratch file partition. Some experts say that a page file on a machine with 8GB of ram is not really used. Windows will use it as storage for crash reports, so you do need a page file. Other than that it is only used when there isn't enough free ram to satisfy a memory request. As someone else mentioned, 5400 RPM drives are not for performance, and you might not notice an increase in performance by going to RAID0, What it will get you, is a 240GB virtual volume that you can partition into two (or more) logical volumes. I personally think that RAID is wasted on a general purpose desktop machine, and is more trouble than it is worth as a data drive. That being said, using it as a page file and/or scratch file might be an interesting experiment.

 

[alexjbriggs]

Thanks again for that response. The reason why I suggested raid 0 in the first place as the scratch drives is because Adobe specifically recommends it on their websites. While I realize 5400rpm won't produce well in performance, I figured there must be some logic behind it if it's specifically stated on adobe's site.

Here is what I'm referencing to:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

"RAID 0 arrays make excellent scratch disks, especially if you use the array exclusively for your scratch disk."

Although it does mention "fast raid 0 array", it's hard to tell if they are implying using a raid 0 array will result in faster scratch disk performance, or if they mean "using faster hard disks in raid 0 array".

Either way, I can't see it hurt to try. Unless you can think of a different RAID array that may result in better performance with the 5400rpm drives?

 

[clarkjd]

Thanks again for that response. The reason why I suggested raid 0 in the first place as the scratch drives is because Adobe specifically recommends it on their websites. While I realize 5400rpm won't produce well in performance, I figured there must be some logic behind it if it's specifically stated on adobe's site.

Here is what I'm referencing to:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

"RAID 0 arrays make excellent scratch disks, especially if you use the array exclusively for your scratch disk."

Although it does mention "fast raid 0 array", it's hard to tell if they are implying using a raid 0 array will result in faster scratch disk performance, or if they mean "using faster hard disks in raid 0 array".

Either way, I can't see it hurt to try. Unless you can think of a different RAID array that may result in better performance with the 5400rpm drives?

With 8GB of ram, your system will rarely use the page file, so I don't think having the page file on your RAID array will really affect the scratch disk performance as far as Adobe is concerned(especially since you will have a logical volume for each purpose). I do think that they meant "using faster hard disks in a RAID 0 array" for the best performance I can't think of a different RAID configuration that would improve the performance of the 5400 RPM drives. As you say, it can't hurt to try. Your exposure to data loss is minimal, since you only have the scratch and page files on the array, neither of which need to be backed up.

Good Luck! Let me know how it turns out.

 

[alexjbriggs]

Thanks again Clark.

I'm setting up with your recommendations.

I'm a little bummed. I found two Sata 7200rpm drives in my garage. I was going to use them as the raid 0 array, but for some reason one of them isn't being recognized by Windows. I plugged it into an external enclosure via USB to see what was on it and it turns on and spins up, even makes the Windows ding noise as if it recognizes it. However, it doesn't show it anywhere in Windows, not even in disk management or diskpart.

I plugged it into my actual motherboard and the bios did recognize it there at initial post screen, but then popped up with a "drive failed to load" type message. Wonder what this means?

Oh well, sticking with the 5400s for now it seems.