Which RAID0 Setup is best? Your opinion please..

[scissorclaw]

I just bought a Soyo Dragon lite and am plainng on setting up a RAID 0 with 2x40GB WD 8MB cache HD with an extra 15 GB WD Caviar 2MB drive. Now, I know some people will be opposed to the RAID 0 setup because of lack of redundancy. However, I already have a online backup account that backs up my data from my other computer every night (work computer) automatically, so I am just going to add this data to the Que to get backed up every night.
Now I put it to you. Would the best setup be to load the XP OS on the 15GB drive, the once that is setup, add the RAID 0 array from within windows and put all my data and games and swap file on them? Or, and I fugure this is a waste of space, but I have to ask anyway. Put the XP OS on the RAID aaray and use the 15GB drive for the swap file and other non-vital data? I personally like the firat idea, but I have seen some arguments for the other one. Anyway, let me know what you all think. Thanks folks!

 

[Dreamland]

scissorclaw -

If you're using XP, then the O/S access to it's own system, logging and registry files probably will have far more impact on performance than how fast it can get to the swap file. If you have 256MB or more of physical RAM and you're *not* constantly switching between two or more memory-intensive programs, then the swap file's use is minimal anyway.

IMHO, you're best choice for overall performance is to load XP on a small NTFS partition of 2 - 3GB on the outside cylinders (first part) of your RAID. This does not have to be the partition you boot from - you can boot from a FAT32 partition on the 15GB drive if you want.

You can put the swap file on the 15GB disk or on a dedicated partition of your RAID, but I doubt you would see any difference during normal use either way. I would *not* put it on the same partition as your XP system files, but this is more for data integrity than performance reasons.

You're far better off focusing on keeping the XP system partition as fast, small, clean and unfragmented as possible rather than doing much of anything with the swap file.