Question Splitting up resorces between multiple hard drives

Jun 5, 2021
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I am not sure this is the correct spot for my question.

I am old school trs-80 old school.

Anyway I am used to regularly loading windows on on 1 drive. That is its purpose the OS.
A 2nd drive for windows temp files, swap files and programs that need temp files.
A 3rd drive for loading my programs.
A 4th for files.

I still only load windows on 1 drive and use a second for my files. this way I never have to worry about loosing files if the system crashes and has to be reloaded.
but with ssd's etc is there still any benefit to having temp and program files separate?
The problem used to be read write speeds of drives I wonder if splitting them up will bottleneck in the controller now.

I am not really asking about real world noticeable improvements I am talking theoretical and maximum everything running at its max speeds.
I have looked arounsd the web and have not see anyone talking about this. I thought this up because I have so many spare parts around its not a cost issues.


Minor note: I have a Nvme PCIEe cad that my computer will not boot to. BUT it can see it and I could use that for swap and temporary files. That would beat any SSD drive I have.
 
have almost always kept separate system drives;
one for any actual OS, a second for temporary system directories & pagefile.

most applications aren't very resource hungry so unless they are for heavy system stress testing i keep them with the original C:\Program Files directories.

games, downloads, personal file storage, and separate backup locations
also always get their own drives.

while on average we might not notice much of a difference in loading times and disk access speeds by separating storage spaces onto multiple disks;
if the OS, downloads\uploads, applications, copying\pasting, playing media, etc are all accessing the same disk at the same time there will be a significant slow down of all.

it started for me many years ago when slower disks made quite an issue with games and applications loading data very slowly when also sharing files.
it grew to also be having separate drives for temp and page\swap files to help keep the OS healthy and it's disk from fragmenting as much.
and not having to worry about partition size(s) & arrangement when changing\wiping an OS or reorganizing files is always a plus.

besides any disk access speed improvements we may see by using multiple drives
organization and data security are also a big plus.
 
Aug 11, 2021
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I am not sure this is the correct spot for my question.

I am old school trs-80 old school.

Anyway I am used to regularly loading windows on on 1 drive. That is its purpose the OS.
A 2nd drive for windows temp files, swap files and programs that need temp files.
A 3rd drive for loading my programs.
A 4th for files.

I still only load windows on 1 drive and use a second for my files. this way I never have to worry about loosing files if the system crashes and has to be reloaded.
but with ssd's etc is there still any benefit to having temp and program files separate?
The problem used to be read write speeds of drives I wonder if splitting them up will bottleneck in the controller now.

I am not really asking about real world noticeable improvements I am talking theoretical and maximum everything running at its max speeds.
I have looked arounsd the web and have not see anyone talking about this. I thought this up because I have so many spare parts around its not a cost issues.


Minor note: I have a Nvme PCIEe cad that my computer will not boot to. BUT it can see it and I could use that for swap and temporary files. That would beat any SSD drive I have.
I am a complete novice when it comes to computers, tech, and parts. I got my computer built through CyberPower. I an SSD and 2 HDDs but I am currently not using the HDDsfor anything at this current moment. I want to relieve some of the stress that is put onto my SSD by utilizing my HDDs if that is possible. I ask this as a reply to your post because you mention how you are splitting up the strain on one particular drive onto the other ones. How did you do this and if possible, how can I do this?
 
I am a complete novice when it comes to computers, tech, and parts. I got my computer built through CyberPower. I an SSD and 2 HDDs but I am currently not using the HDDsfor anything at this current moment. I want to relieve some of the stress that is put onto my SSD by utilizing my HDDs if that is possible. I ask this as a reply to your post because you mention how you are splitting up the strain on one particular drive onto the other ones. How did you do this and if possible, how can I do this?
Just to keep life simply what many folks do is put the OS and apps on a ssd and then use a hdd for other stuff.

For the ssd size I would not recco smaller than 250GB and 500GB would be better.
For the hdd size it depends how much stuff you want to store.
 
Minor note: I have a Nvme PCIEe cad that my computer will not boot to. BUT it can see it and I could use that for swap and temporary files. That would beat any SSD drive I have.
You can still have the BCDstore (boot files) on whatever drive does boot and point to the nvme so that you can have windows running from it.

In general, if all the drives are on the same controller and the same speed then of course using multiple files on multiple drives is going to be faster, but if all drives are different then it gets incredibly complicated.

But the only real reason to keep files on different drives is to keep them save from destruction, as you already mentioned.
The OS the CPUs the drives, everything in your system is so advanced by now that you will barely see any difference, we have so much cache and ram that reads and writes don't really matter anymore.