Tip: hard drive configuration for the rich and bored

Post Reply
User avatar
Hyde
Hyde!
Posts: 3477
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:26 am

Tip: hard drive configuration for the rich and bored

Post by Hyde »

During the downtime I decided to optimize my data throughput specifically for AO.

You can't do this with just 1 physical hard disk (multiple partitions on a drive don't count as multiple hard disks in this type of endeavor). In my case I have 3 drives of decent performance. If I only had 2, I would have put the page file on the Windows drive (remember, this is for optimizing AO time, not non-AO time). If I had 4 disks I would have put the Prefs on the 4th drive.


Disk 0: (10K SCSI channel A 68.35GB)
... Partition 0 (60.0GB): Windows
... Partition 1 (9GB): AO Preferences (for writing/reading chat logs independently of other AO data)

Disk 1: (10K SCSI channel B 68.35GB)
... Partition 0 (60GB): Windows mirror (aka, hot backup)
... Partition 1 (9GB): AO Client (for running AO independent of Windows)

Disk 3: (7.2K SATA channel A 250GB)
... Partition 0 (180GB): Large data (pictures, MP3s, etc) AND page file (for reading/writing page files independently of Windows or AO) AND FRAPS recording.
... Partition 1 (60GB): Windows mirror (aka, hot backup 2)


NOTES:
* IDEALLY: I would have had Windows on the 7.2K SATA drive and the page files on the 10K SCSI drive, but, not an optimal configuration for system recovery in the event of a mess.
* NTFS ... not FAT32. Yes, its important for performance.
* Defrag ... I purchased OO Defrag. One of the only times I've bought a system utility.
* I could have enabled compression on my Screenshots folder "just in case" but I'm only using 2.7GB of 8.35. At my current rate of screenshots I could play for 20 more years and not run out of space (assuming no expansions durint that time ; )
* I used the ability to map a NTFS partition to a folder on another drive, where Disk 0 is C:, so that "C:\Program Files\Funcom" shows up as Disk1:Partition1 and "C:\Program Files\Funcom\Prefs" shows up as Disk0:Partition1. A bit circuitous, but it works well.
Mud
Leetissimo!
Posts: 1805
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 10:01 pm
Location: Texas

Post by Mud »

what does that do? and when are you coming back to visit me and fix my computer?
Daddyrabbit 220/30 ENFStuff
User avatar
Hyde
Hyde!
Posts: 3477
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:26 am

Post by Hyde »

It makes it so that:

* when Windows and AO want to read data at the same time, they can do it without bottlenecking each other.

* when AO and Windows want to write to the disk at the same time, same thing (and since I use chat logs, AO is -always- writing).

* when anything wants to use the page file can do so (read or write the page) without it occuring on their drives.

And ... never.
Post Reply